BS' Blog

Finally! 4GB of True 1.8V DDR2-800 Memory!

2008-01-17T00:39:00.000-05:00

One of the things that continually burns me up on PC Memory is the over-marketing of the synchronous clock of today's Double Data Rate II (DDR2). It was bad enough when latency was jacked up high (worse) for higher synchronous clock rates and performance was no different. I touched on how to calculate real-world "latency" on DRAM modules near the end of my Spring 2007 PC Assembler's Quick Guide.

But now the majority of vendors are claiming DDR2-800 (JEDEC PC2-6400) and higher synchronous clocks that utterly violate the JEDEC spec of 1.8V that require you to run them at 2.0-2.1V typically, 1.9V if you're lucky, and 2.2V+ are not uncommon either. It was less common at DDR2-667 (JEDEC PC2-5300) for them to do this, but now almost defacto standard with DDR2-800 (even in notebook SO-DIMMs, almost guaranteeing incompatibility). To even misinform the consumer more, some even report the DDR2-667 timings (e.g., CAS 5), and the DDR2-800 gets worse (e.g., CAS 6 is common), and that's only when you over-volt too. That's why I've just stuck with DDR2-667 for now, inexpensive 1GB HP parts when rebates are offered, along with a JEDEC compliant 1.8V DDR2-667 parts from a few vendors.

Luckily I noted last week the Transcend JM4GDDR2-8K 4GiB kit, two (2) 2GiB DIMMs that are fully JEDEC DDR2 Compliant at 1.8V for PC2-6400 (DDR2-800) rated with CAS 5 timing. It is a very inexpensive kit available for under $80 at the time of this writing. It replaced my 8-month old Patriot PSD24G667K 4GiB kit, also two (2) 2GiB DIMMs that were fully JEDEC DDR2 compliant at 1.8V for PC2-5300 (DDR2-667) rated with CAS 5 timing.

On the eVGA 112-CK-NF77-A1 Mainboard (eVGA "NF77") with the nVidia GeForce 7150 IGP (with nForce 630i MCP combination), the timings were reported by Serial Presence Detect (SPD) as follows ...
- Transcent DDR2-800: CAS 5, RAD 4, RP 4 and RAS 15 (5-4-4-15)
- Patriot DDR2-667: CAS 5, RAD 4, RP 4, RAS 15 (5-4-4-14)

Essentially the exact same timings, but at a 20% synchronous clock improvement. CAS 5 at DDR2-800 is basically like having CAS 4 at DDR2-667, a RAS of 15 at DDR2-800 closer to a RAS of 12 (than 13) on DDR2-667. Most people are reporting major boosts in performance as memory latency is always a major performance hit. I.e., RAS 15 on DDR2-800 is 37.5ns (26.6MHz "equivalent" -- yes, two-six megahertz like your old 80386 clock, that's how much DRAM technology sucks at latency, such as just getting the first page read). RAS 15 on DDR2-667 is 45ns (22.2MHz "equivalent"). And this is without over-clocking/volting, stock clock and timing at 1.8V.

The overwhelming majority of DDR2-800 modules are, again, over-clocked because they are over-volted beyond 1.8V -- 2.0-2.1V is extremely common. That's why most come with heat spreaders, which also hide the true synchronous clock (reported in latency). If you're running at JEDEC compliant 1.8V, you don't need spreaders, and only need to add spreaders if you want to over-clock/volt. Frankly, I want my memory chips to last, so I'll run them at stock, keep the ambient temperature in the case low, and possibly consider heat spreaders later.

If you just want basic performance, such as a low-end dual-core system, then DDR2-667 will do fine, although make sure you get 1.8V. If you're looking for optimal performance while being compatible, get a DDR2-800 which runs at a true, JEDEC compliant 1.8V and has a true CAS 5 and similar 5-5-5-15 timings or better at actual DDR2-800. So many out there are 6-6-6-18 or similar, and that requires an over-volt to 2.0V+ to get (and some want you to do 2.3V+ to get CAS 5 or 4 at DDR2-800). The Transcend JM4GDDR2-8K 4GiB kit makes a great selection, and just separately pay $5 more for the heat spreaders if you really want to add them (especially if you're going to over-clock/volt to DDR2-1000+).

This blog has been deprecated ...

2007-12-31T00:08:00.000-05:00

As some of you may already know, I am no longer employed as an independent consultant. The work was great, the pay even better, but I quickly got "burnt out" working long hours with virtually no breaks between clients over the last few years, especially through the weekends (and not getting to fly home to my wife). Long story short, I've been working for major Linux vendors the last 6+ months, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon.

In a nutshell, since this move now seems to be permanent, I really don't have to hunt for my own dinner anymore. As such, I really don't bother to show myself publicly except when sanctioned or I otherwise find it beneficial for my employer or the Linux community in general. Yes, there is no more benefit from arguing with retirees and other, "less busy" consultants that have too much time on their hands. No need to show I'm making points based on experience, and not what Google turns up -- which is what used to get me work, because those peers who hired me knew what I was saying was coming from experience. And, frankly, I just liked to help people, but I purposely limited my help to areas where I had corporate experience (and not "I think").

Some of you already noted this, especially since I've pulled back even more in 2007 from the public scene than even 2005-2006 prior. Less help, less personality, less presence, period. My apologies to those who miss my assistance and the real answers that work in enterprises. My apologies to those where I used to directly help on-site when someone else's suggestions (typically not from experience or experience in your field) used to get you in hot water -- even if it was on my own time and expense (and the reason why those people were my biggest advocates). Again, I used to make my points because, even though I was in the minority on things, it got me work, good work (with other peers who had similar experiences to mine), and frankly it's the type of judgment I believe a sound consultant must show (either know it, or don't, and never say, "I think").

Again, I haven't had to do that for some time now, so I haven't shared myself nearly on-line as much, at least not outside of my formal role(s). These facts, combined with Google's "interesting" copyright policies on the Blogger/Blogspot site, is why I'm deprecating this blog, and moving over to my new profile/blog on Yahoo 360. My posts will be less personal, largely technical and all professional. I don't know if I'm going to stay with Yahoo 360 as it moves out of Beta or not, but it will be a RSS 2.0 feed for whenever I get the time to get my Fedora Blog going (just way too busy, but that's a good thing, more time with wife and my life). So until then, please check for updates on my Yahoo 360 page, and not here. I will also keep a link active to my latest professional blog/profile from my LinkedIn profile as well, so you can always check there.

Thank you again for so many of you caring and "keeping in touch" over the last few years. I've kept more of my personal life closed over the last few years, and kept my focus on helping paying customers. Some of you have been extremely thoughtful and professional, and I'll never forget you. Now, hopefully, I'll have more time to add back to the community with real code and other endeavors, with a good support avenue to boot, even if still not direct at the user group or support list level as I did in 2003 and prior. As I've always said, credentials and claims of experience mean nothing, only repeat, sound technical information presented and dissected over years are the only way to show experience others will trust.

Technical verbosity has always been an asset in my experience, and I'm glad most everyone I've worked with has appreciated that, even if retirees and select, other consultants didn't want to respond with the same. Especially when I explained this when people's jobs were on-the-line, like I assumed those same retirees and consultants would want others to consider if their own jobs were on-the-line (especially when they were spreading baseless FUD and pure gossip). It's never been about me "being right," it's only been about experience, applicable experience, combined with focusing on technologies and opportunities, not blind (and often misguided) vendor alignments and marketing.

As I've stated over and over, if I wanted blind vendor alignment and marketing, I would be advocating commercial products. And it explains why I work for my current employer as well, because I believe in the effort, not any marketing (which is often seeing elsewhere). I'm sure some of these people still scratch their head why I explain (defend?) my own competitors, not realizing it's about the collaborative effort, and not some vendor/marketing non-sense. I wish they would see the error of their ways, and the collective community that is built on our commonality, not differences.

I will always and gladly stand with any minority that does. And I guess that has always summed up my professional attitude, which my wife regularly tells me is why she loves me.

UCF 25, NC State 23 (25-3 at half) ...

2007-09-02T11:47:00.000-04:00

I'll post more on this shortly, but we survived both Kevin Smith (our star RB) getting hurt for most of the second half as well as NC State "getting smart" by finally benching Evans (QB) and Brown (RB) and bringing in Beck (QB) and Baker (RB). Running out to a 25-3 half-time lead definitely allowed us to "hold on" for our win against our fateful ACC sacrifice.

My NC State Slideshow (31 pics) at UCFSports.COM

The Ethics of a Litt -le Software Timebomb

2007-08-27T00:00:00.000-04:00

In the last few years, I have learned not to post things like this publicly. They do little good, and in general, cause some serious issues. People who have not merely just misrepresentation but deep and repeat ethical issues expose themselves and "assassinate" their own character. And no matter how much they ask people to delete their posts from public archives, word spreads. I have also avoided even "challenging" these people, avoid even warning others about them (even if a few came to me later and said, "yeah, you warned me beforehand, and I didn't listen") and have largely just stopped trying to pull them out of their own issues as situations as of 2005+ (no matter how much they ask for help, and no matter how much I try to "do it for free" so there are no expectations of further support).

Recommended, Prerequisite Reading:

Why I am posting this ...

But I'm making an exception in this one case. The reason is that this "quote" has been attributed to myself by the "professional" who actually made these statements, as well select others. I want to set the "record straight." In fact, I largely avoided that portion of the thread once the was made (I also noted several "harsh" responses by others have been removed from the thread, which is a common request made by this person of the group), it was not worth getting in the middle of it (and other threads I had nothing to do with are often attributed to me as well on this same list). I know times were tough in 2002-2003, I ran into it myself. But when you cross some lines, or even think such, you are undermining your entire profession -- as well as yourself. Especially when the fault lies with crossing not merely Ethic One and Two, but the Ethic Reality that you start to excuse your crossing of basic ethics.

It's beyond just the lack of attention to the Mission Statement I recommend professionals, especially those that consult around Open Source (e.g., Linux) solutions. Overselling Linux and, worse yet, overselling yourself and your experience (which is beyond just poor marketing, but misrepresentation), leads to much of this. And no one, especially not a consultant, likes to be in a situation when they have failed to meet customer expectations, and especially when they are either too prideful or, worse yet, do not have the backbone to bring in another consultant. And even when they do in the case of the latter, they have often embarrassed themselves in front of the client to the point there is an expectation of non-payment. In my case, that is why I have always help these people out "for free" and that way they have no reason to dislike me (although they find other ways).

Now I have been rather "harsh" with people at times when their misrepresentation of themselves and when their ethics have crossed boundaries. I have learned in the last few years that it is best just avoid people that make these type of unethical statements, because they not only hurt themselves, but anyone who tries to help them. And being "harsh" not only makes you a target, but people tend to "remember" you were part of the thread as well -- regardless of what you were saying or pointing out.

Projects Don't Fail, Consultants Fail Their Projects ...

As I always say, "Projects don't fail, consultants fail their projects." You can preprend both nouns in each phrase with "Linux" or "Software" or whatever project or context is under discussion. Basic engineering project management and lifecycle 101 here -- client/customer discovery, requirements, specifications, statements of work, etc... These help you avoid issues with clients/customers. If you do not want to deal with them, then just consider doing the work for free, or finding a more charitable adventure where you should donate your time.

Because if you are not a responsible, professional consultant, all you are going to net is frustration and financial loss -- and it's your fault, as the consultant. And if you bring others into that pit with you, it's your fault, as the consultant. And we all net what you have sown (even if we did it for free, we will eventually direct our charity towards more fruitful endeavors).

QUOTE:
'One more thing, and this is sad. I'd imagine that 1/3 of the business owners will try to stiff you out of your money. Some will invent excuses why the software isn't what you promised, some will endlessly repeat that they'll pay you "next week", and some will say "tough luck".'

I am starting with this because it is "the setup." Here we have a "professional" that is looking at "the problem" incorrectly. When you choose to be a consultant, you inherit the responsibility of basic project management. You do not have to be anal, but you have to set expectations with the client, analyze, discover and inform them of requirements, including the deliverables in a statement of work (which can be done in one page, or even half). Whether they are big or small, whether they are a formal corporation and want you to take the client-vendor agreement to an anal level of documentation, or you merely condense that down into 30 minutes with a prospective small client so they are aware of what factors into why and how you get paid -- it is just unavoidable.

Transgressions Against Others Begin By Excusing Ethics ...

The crossing of Ethics quickly spiral beyond just the obvious. It is beyond lack of setting client/customer expectations, beyond poor marketing and direct misrepresentation, beyond not having the experience or the experience under the client's need or context. It reaches the point where the transgression of others becomes a way of conducting yourself, largely because you have already transgressed yourself by not putting forth your limits (for whatever reasons, usually market driven -- like bashing one company or other organization and seeing the number of hits go up 10 times over on your web site).

If you enter any market, ensure you respect yourself and your own abilities before doing so. Otherwise -- again -- if you are already transgressing against your own limits and misrepresenting yourself, you are not only going to transgress others, but even excuse it.

QUOTE:
'You need to put a time bomb in your software. Make it 4 days out. If the check clears, email him, tell him you made a little mistake, and tell him to install the file attachment from the email in directory /usr/local/bin/mycustomapp. That will difuse the timebomb without his ever knowing there's a timebomb. But if he doesn't pay, he's got 4 days of data entry in there, and he's going to have to pay you before you lift a finger.
Once again, before you show up initially, it should be agreed that at the end of the day, he gives you a check for $400 (or $600 when the economy gets better). No net 15 or net 30 -- not on a $400 piece of software. TODAY. If he does that, and if the check clears, you'll disable the timebomb before he ever knows you had one.'

Now this was a message to a young, up-in-coming IT candidate. It was well off-the-tangent of the inquire and discussion, but that is not uncommon when a select "professional" wants to take point on bashing clients/customers, companies and organizations, especially when they are not so different than his small endeavors. I still neither know what he was attempting to accomplish nor why he commonly takes this approach, even against community-developed software that others do find very useful, but try as many of us might, we cannot get him to stop and think of what ethical message (beyond the "subjective" ones) he is sending about himself (much less those who associate with him).

Why Did I Stop At Only This One Post?

I will leave it to only this one (1) reference because it is the one that he, and select others, have attributed paraphrased versions of these quotes to myself. For the original source and proof I did not say it, the archive is this link. I am not posting it to 'bash' him publicly, of which I stopped doing in 2004 (after a heavy and very accurate / "3rd party verifiable" list of transgressions in a post made to an off-topic list the year before), but to set my name clean -- and make a point of why I do not associate with such people anymore (it should be noted that everything I did for this individual was for free and of my own charity, without call for thanks or anything else as others can attest). I am sure he will threaten myself with a lawsuit as he has done before with myself, others, groups he disagrees or forks from with (only to turn around and use the same organization to his advantage when it does so), etc...

Please understand that virtually every "strong" post I have made has been aimed at such behavior, especially when it was very repeatable and clearly driven. I have spent the last few years reserving my comments publicly, even keeping the overwhelming majority of my posts off-list, to avoid running into these select, few, but far too commonplace and unethical approaches to clients, customers and -- especially so -- peer professionals. It is not worth my time or bother, let alone the focus that results on myself, or anyone else associated with myself they can contact.

Besides, it would cross my nature to question others before myself. I do not like to use people or organizations to do my bidding, and I respect the "greater efforts" of what people and organizations attempt to do. My only problem is with ethical issues, and I have just learned to realize that such people are left to be, as any attempt to help them (no matter how you do it) is futile. Especially when they excuse their unethical actions -- that is really the "litmus test" if someone can be helped, or not.

Open Source Solution Providers' Code of Ethics

2007-08-24T20:37:00.000-04:00

Some dozen years ago I was a brash, but experienced technologist fresh with a traditional engineering education. Over those years, my professionalism matured. But one thing has never changed. It has been my Code of Ethics. Not rules. Not laws. Not anything I wished to enforce on anyone else, but the Code of Ethics that has driven my every consideration and, most importantly, the rock solid integrity I have. It is my name. It is what I share with select, other peers of the same value and integrity in approach, in drive, in truth.

In early February, I realized and documented my approach to clients in the The Open Source Solution Providers' Mission Statement. Now I wish to document The Open Source Solutions Providers' Code of Ethics. This is the Code of Ethics professionals apply to one another as much as their clients and customers, as it is directly reflected in their approach to life as much as profession.

Ethic One: Ethics Are Not Rules, They Are Obvious
- There are no rules, no violations, no reprimands, no politics

Rules are for politics. Rules are subjective and, when wielded from someone in a position of authority, they may be unobjective. Although due process does often solve some of this, many smaller groups also break down into singularities and cults of personality.

Without rules, there are no violations. Without violations there are no reprimands. This removes any formal enforcement, which is often driven by politics more than people, let alone ethics. Ethics are obvious. Ethics are not governed by politics. Rules can be used to excuse agendas. Ethics cannot. Rules can be used to violate ethics. Ethics are obvious. With no rules, this removes agendas and politics, and unethical behavior cannot be excused by them.

Ethics thus become about peer professionals pointing their peers to the obviousness of the truth, when they are overlooked. Peer professionals need not and should never expose statements or actions against ethics publicly, they can merely do so privately. Ethic One then become about the self-responsibility of one recognizing the care and consideration of fellow peer professionals to do this privately, one's responsibility to one's name and integrity, one's responsibility to put forth the Ethics in not merely statement but action forward, for one's own integrity.

Ethic Two: Know Oneself, Limitations and Harmony
- No professional is more dangerous to others, especially oneself, than one not self-aware

We are all inexperienced, unaware, ignorant and naive of many things. Our experiences drive our knowledge, approach, theory and practice. The second ethic is the responsibility to know when to admit fault, to admit ignorance, to admit naivety, to admit wrong.

Most of all, this responsibility is to oneself. No one likes to be told they are at fault, they are ignorant, they are inexperienced, they are naive. This begins with the ethic to oneself, to contribute experience, not marketing, not hearsay, not assumption. Because when someone is told they are wrong, it begins with oneself, not the messenger -- because it is up to them to accept their limits, for only then can they move beyond them. Otherwise they will run into their same, own, self-imposed limit and issue again and again.

There are no less than seventeen (17) dead astronaunts, and more scheduled, due to lack of self-awareness, self-admission, self-respect to know when it is time to admit, time to disclose, time to move on, for even just oneself, first and foremost. No one was unable to feed their family because they said "I do not know" to a question or "I am not an expert on this subject matter" to a prospective client.

Unfortunately, there have been many people put out of work, or put six feet under, because professionals did put forth, "I know" or "I am an expert on this subject matter" or, far worse, did not stop themselves when they thought they knew, but did not -- when they claimed first-hand, customer or client applied experiences, but they had not.

[2007-Aug-27] Clarification: There is a fine line between "marketing" and "misrepresentation." With peer professionals, marketing is often misrepresentation, let your experience under a specific context or subject matter do your marketing.

Ethic Three: Do Not Market, Respect the Context of Experience
- Share only what you know and only what you have experienced first-hand at customers and clients

Customers and clients have always been best served by those who have had first-hand experience at clients, and not those who wish to challenge themselves with something they have never done before or outside of a customer or client, but market themselves to the customer or client as otherwise.

Likewise, peer professionals have an ethical responsibility in shared knowledge to approach their peers with respect, courtesy and equality. Equality is about respect of first-hand, customer and client applied experience, mentoring and valuing differences in experience. The context of experience is key. The context of a customer or client application drives the solution. Solutions will there differ between different applications.

There is no one solution for all situations, so peer professionals of different experiences of different contexts will differ. The only unwelcome context of experience is that is not from first-hand experience at a customer or client, but projected to be otherwise. This is obvious to a peer professional with experience, while it takes far more time to earn the trust -- not mere respect -- of other peer professionals that one provides sound, repeatable solutions with experience.

Ethic Summation: Peer Trust is Years of Sound, Helpful Experience
- Credentials are nothing. Respect is not trust. Trust is absolute. Trust takes years.

While lack of experience is obvious, and because experience is varied and differing under different context, it takes years to gain the trust of peer professionals that you are experienced, and only in and under the context of that subject matter. And this trust is earned over years of repeat, sound, helpful experience to other peer professionals.

Credentials cannot be trusted. Many credentials easy to earn or, worse yet, do not reflect experience well. Credentials may be required to conduct or merely enter business with certain entities or gain approval by a department or organization, but peer professionals know they are nothing on their own.

Trust that a professional addresses Ethic Three, by not marketing, not soliciting, by only sharing their experience under a specific context, for the solutions they have delivered. Trust that what the peer professional shares is genuine, actual, implemented and completed, not merely devised, designed and never actually attempted.

Trust that a professional addresses Ethic Two, by knowing their limitations in the context of the experience they share, any limitations in experiences they have run into and possible stepped back and admitted their shortcomings, consulted other professionals, and learned from. Trust that the peer professional will separate experience that is applicable to the context and not to another.

Trust that a professional addresses Ethic One, providing peer professionals experience and considerations that is based on a strong attention to these Ethics. A peer professional you would conduct business with, be able to hold accountable, be able to rely on for deliverables, to entrust with your co-professional livelihood. A peer professional who will tell you when they are outside their first-hand, customer and client implemented experience, and not leave you alone with a customer, or privately consulting a lawyer in order to secure and leave you as the sole liability in a project.

Ethic Reality: Transgressions Against Others Begin By Excusing Ethics
- No one can read the minds of others, much less know where everyone else comes from

Nearly all alleged transgressions begin as misunderstandings or annoyances. Transgressions and counter-transgressions become true transgressions when they cross Ethics. There is no excuse to ever cross Ethics, ever, and only undoes the values of and against oneself.

No one can read the minds of others. No one can understand where everyone else comes from. Everyone has quirks. Everyone has been taught differing values. Everyone has opinions on what matters and what does not. Transgressions begin with these and other differences, from misunderstandings to annoyances.

In group organizations and assemblies, even as a common group, the audience varies at the individual. One person's direct answer is not enough information for another. One person's verbosity and completeness is another's talking down to their experience. Equality is key, equality in peer consideration, equality in peer tolerance. Petty are those who do not find tolerances in the variety of audience as individuals.

The ultimate transgression is of oneself, envy. Envy goes against every Ethic above -- Knowing oneself and harmony, sharing experiences not marketing and recognizing the context of varying, differing experiences, and the summation of the trust that should be earned between peer professionals for their experiences of varying application and context. Envy leads to marketing, statements of falsehood, the general lie that you can state more than you are, which is tiny compared to the collective knowledge around you.

If we are all peer professionals with our varying experiences, we will never cross each others' experiences, but complement them. We will never be at odds in learning, but only augmenting our knowledge with each others' experiences -- including tapping one another for projects and contracts, so one can gain first-hand, customer and client experience from another. And most of all, we will be putting forth the ethic that serves ourselves, individually, as a support group of peer professionals of equality, of peer professional Ethic.

Transgressions against others begin by excusing statements or actions going against these Ethics, which are against ourself and merely spread to others -- undoing their summation and value, undoing the reality of that value.

People Too Ignorant To Vote

2007-08-06T21:06:00.000-04:00

Every year I go to vote. I feel everyone should register to vote and go to the polls. I take the ballot. I only vote what I know about, not what I read on the ballot, or see next to some party or other affiliation. I don't like to vote in ignorance. I leave much of my ballot blank as a result. Ignorance is not something to wield in a vote.

I'm Just a Generation-X Engineer, Traditionally Educated and Experienced

Unfortunately, I am increasingly in the minority. In fact, I'm in the minority on a lot of things.

First off, I'm a degreed, traditional engineer. We are rare now. There is a great number of not even engineering technologists (who are often much more skilled than us engineers), but a huge number of service technicians who consider themselves engineers. I am constantly faced with dumb stares when I start talking risk analysis, sigma statistics, elementary issues with feasibility and countless microeconomics concepts.

Secondly, I am a staunch American Libertarian Capitalist. I believe the concept of the social contract is very compatible with capitalism. I believe individual choice to assemble towards the greater good is about the individual's right to do or not to do so. I do not believe in group rights and forcing people to do things against their will. Because at some point, group rights become about what a majority wants, not the individual.

Lastly, I am a generation-X male entering the prime income earning years of my life. I have decided to marry early, and have an outstanding marriage now into the double digit years. As a member of generation-X, I have accepted the stigma that we are clueless, faceless and don't know where we stand. But we stand a very small generation between the larger boomers, and the even larger Generation-Y.

The former generation fought for their rights, and are being rewarded with a busted Social Security system. That's why I plan on helping take care of my parents, as any other self-sufficient Generation-X member should. The latter generation has grown up largely envious of what Paris Hilton has, and as more and more of them vote, they believe successful, self-made (although largely thanx to my parents insisting I go to and paying for college) middle class person "makes too much."

Ignorance: Tax Cuts For Millionaires

More and more Generation-Y members assume higher income taxes mean better taxing people like Paris Hilton. They don't understand the first thing about the difference between earning income, having discretionary income and turning that into investments, which create private sector jobs which help them accrue wealth they didn't have prior -- versus those who already have wealth, and don't pay income taxes, people like Paris Hilton.

They don't understand how in a progressive tax system how high income earners get at least the same tax cut as lower income earners, if not (and quite often) more, even if only the rate is cut for the lower bracket. No matter how many times I try to explain it to them, the simple math, they call it "Voodoo Math" and that people like me are easily debunked. They say the same thing about discretionary income versus existing wealth. And trying to get them to read even just the cliff notes of a book like The Millionaire Next Door (90% of millionaires are self-made, have a 4 bedroom or less house and drive a non-luxury sedan) is right wing rhetoric (Just when am I right winger? Oh, that's right, for the same reasons a right winger calls me a left winger -- because I don't agree with either!).

Probably the funniest thing is when they make fun of the beat-up pickup that I drive. They associate people who pay the highest income tax rate with Paris Hilton, and there is no way you can break them of that. They are dumbfounded when they see the pickup I drive, and wonder why I'm defending not raising income taxes -- all while they make fun of me as well.

Ignorance: The Return of the 90% Tax Bracket

Some are even more dangerous, and they have read about the former 90% tax bracket in years past. I have seen a great number of Generation-Y folk talk about how $100,000 is enough for anyone to live on, and that anyone making more than $100,000 should pay 90%. And stupid me, I try to educate them on that too -- especially since the marriage penalty takes effect for anyone who makes around $70,000 total. I.e., married couples who make more than $70,000 start paying significantly more tax than those "shacking up" who make only $35,000 each upward.

Let's see here, if anyone who made over $100,000 had to pay 90%, guess what? I wouldn't work! I wouldn't travel. I wouldn't leave my wife. I'd let her work, or I'd take some part-time work and she could stay home. And we'd be far more happy and not worrying about our future anymore -- that future where we have enough money so we are not a burden on society, let alone I can help take care of my parents because Social Security isn't going to be there. I'll let other people worry about that.

Now what does that "cost" us -- and the country -- for me not to work? Yep, this is where I smack the heck out of their ignorance!

Ignorance: We Collect Those Higher Taxes, More Than Before

You see, you now do not get all those taxes you raised. Not only that, you don't even get the former taxes I was paying at the bracket. No one gets anything anymore -- not even the taxes I made before! And if I can figure this out, you can be sure any other successful, American Libertarian Capitalist can. They stop working to, or reduce their amount of work, and income, which also means less tax.

And you still don't tax those who already have wealth a dime! But it gets better!

Ignorance: Will Still Have Discretionary Income To Invest

We no longer have discretionary income. What's discretionary income? If you ask such a Generation-Y'er, it's that "bling bling" we spend all our money on. Wrong! It's all those investments we make for our future, investments that create private sector jobs. Now those are gone. I'm not working, making that money, paying those taxes -- even less than before -- and I'm not investing most of that money into new jobs for others -- not luxuries, new jobs.

Remember, I'm the guy you're making fun of for driving that beat-up pickup! And yet it still gets better!

Ignorance: My Productivity Still Exists And Adds to the GDP

Unless people force the government go to all the houses of people like me, hold a gun to my head and force me to leave my wife and work, I don't produce. I don't add to the GDP. I reduce our country's output. But that doesn't matter, right? Because I'm like Paris Hilton, I'm off doing "the simple life."

I'm not off designing telecommunications equipment so the Coast Guard can save lives during Katrina. I'm not off designing that Tivo so you can record your Paris Hilton shows and yell at the TV when watching it for the 10th time. I'm not designing anything you can use. I'm an engineer, that evil person who destroys the environment with the creations that I force you to use.

So who cares if I work. Heck, we've already shipped off our non-service technical jobs like manufacturing to China anyway. So why not just gut our engineering intelligence too by taxing engineers to the point they don't want to work, and will just let their spouses work. It's enough to live on for us, and since I can't make any more money for discretionary investments and actually outputting to our economy -- the limited technology we have left -- I won't bother working and you won't get the new tax, much less not even the tax I was paying before.

Brilliant!

Now that's just taxes. We can hit on other things.

Ignorance: I'll Power My Car With Hydrogen

There is no end to people who say they are going to buy a hydrogen car and get a home, electrolysis hydrogen generation kit. Of course I have to ask, "and what does the kit run on?" And there is no end of people who will argue with this engineer -- an electrical engineer -- on how "efficient" it is at generating hydrogen from the elctricity that comes out of their wall. They will miss quote "efficiency" of motors and the electrolysis process not thinking of where and, more importantly, how that electricity is generated!

Ignorance: We're All Going Solar Power

Let me introduce you to the first father of the Solar Panel, Albert Einstein. Yes, the guy you heard about that theorized relativity did not win the Nobel Prize for relativity (and it was generally disregarded by many at the time), but the photoelectric effect. What is the photoelectric effect?

Well, it talks about that whole direct photon to electricity conversion. And when you start talking about the materials, area and all those other goodies, there is actually a limit to how much energy you can get from a solar panel. "Oh, but we have breakthroughs all-the-time!" Sigh, what do I know about this, I'm just a "dumb" electrical engineer who has had modern physics and other study, let alone practical applications.

Heck, I'm still arguing with people over ...

Ignorance: The Moon Landings Were Faked!

After all ...

- The flag Neil Armstrong planted couldn't "wave" because there is no air on the moon.
- Alan Shepard's golf ball couldn't "wobble" because there is no air, and ...
- How could they film Apollo 17 when it lifted off because no one was left?

Ah no, Neil just planted it too close to the lander and its upper assent engine! You know, the whole action-reaction of particles being sent one direction so it causes the other direction to move (and those particles do strike other things, like the ground, the flag, etc...?).

I talk about the "Angular Momentum" on Neil's ball and they call it "Voodoo Engineering Talk." Sigh, what did I go to college for?

Well, duh, remote control. In fact, it takes 2 seconds for the signal to travel, and we didn't have control systems technology back then like we do today, so that's why we do not have good video of earlier Apollo lunar ascents -- we got lucky after several tries by Apollo 17.

Ignorance: Well, We Only Need To Focus On "Renewable Energies," I'm Against Anything That Is Not

So we have environmentalists that make it a living, lawyer hell for any engineer who wants to build newer, cleaner refineries, newer, cleaner fossil fuel plants and countless other things. So what do we get? California. No new plants for 10 years = Rolling Blackouts.

You know, people like yourself want to power your TV and TiVo to catch and re-watch those Paris Hilton shows for the 10th time -- only to have the power cut out because there is insufficient supply. And now you're complaining about the cost of gas to power that $40,000 SUV daddy and mommy bought you after fighting to prevent any new refineries being built. I mean, if we stop engineers from building those evil things greedy oil companies want that "Captain Planet warned me about," then they will have to use those plentiful, "renewable resources" that engineers just refuse to use, right?

Brilliant!

Ignorance: Nuclear Power? One Word: Chernobyl

And how many graphite nuclear reactors does the US operate? What is the "worst case scenario" for a US nuclear power plant? Why does France (a country I typically make fun of) have such a clean power grid? Why are nine (9) other countries -- including the US -- causing a major resurgence of French engineering leadership? Why did the 2005 Energy Act put $4B into nuclear power research? And why did the co-founder of Greenpeace -- an organization entirely founded after the Three Mile Island nuclear incident -- change his mind?

Because other than Wind Power -- which senators like Ted Kennedy is fighting against "not in my back yard, it's an eyesore!" -- the only other, feasible alternative to fossil fuels for mass power generation is nuclear fission.

Yeah, I know, "feasible" it's one of those "trick engineering terms" that we use to fool smarter people like yourself. It's one of those terms the Army Corps of Engineers tried to use to explain why they couldn't prevent the flooding of New Orleans in 2005 any more than they couldn't in the '60s or '20s before that, or for many other cities like Houston, etc.. as well.

After all, we put men on the moon, right? We can do anything? We can stop a massive hurricane with tens of thousands of times the Newtons of force in a second than the mighty Saturn V was capable of in the few minutes! Doh! That's right, we faked those too -- yeah, we engineers just go around faking everything to pay our big salaries so we can lobby government to keep our taxes low.

Ignorance: Well, the US Imports Far More Oil From the Middle East than Anyone!

Well, depends on "who" you are talking about. If you mean individual countries, yes, guilty as charged! Now add up population, GDP and other things until you get an "equivalent." By God, look at the European Union (EU)! Unlike the US, that actually has extensive coal reserves and even trades with countries that have "All Pro-Chavez TV, All-the-Time, You're Watching the New State-Run-Only Media Country" for its oil, it's not so surprising why the US has 42 allies supporting us in Iraq. ;)

That's not saying I agree with the Iraq war. But if you think the US is the only country securing petroleum reserves for ourselves ... ha ... ha ha ha ... ha ha ha! In fact, there's far more at stake for the EU with Russia than the US, because it wants to tap those resources to ease it's greater dependence on the middle east, like the US has with Chavez and other nations in South America, Africa, etc...

Select Generation-Y'ers, and You Should Know By Now Who You Are ...

At some point you have to ask yourself ... are you too ignorant to vote on many things?

No child left behind? I think Generation-Y is a perfect example of why some people need to be left behind! They will not listen to logic or reason, do not want to bother with learning the physics or microeconomics that goes against their political alignments. After all, they can find nearly all TV newspeople and analysts, all completely removed from an engineering education, to agree with them! And if not, they can always find a blogger or two as well.

In all honesty and self-realization, my generation -- Generation-X -- wasn't exactly the shining star compared to my parents in education either. But one thing we didn't do was hold kids behind and focus on standardized tests well below their capability. We let kids excel if they could and we realized what some were and were not capable of. This "everyone is special" non-sense didn't exist as a government -- i.e., forced community (socialist) -- institution. Why? Because they were our future, even if only a subset of them.

And most of all, in Generation-X, we didn't expect ... well, we just didn't "expect." Today, "entitlement, entitlement, entitlement" is all I hear from Generation-Y'ers. If you're a Generation-Y'er, and you don't believe so, you have my sincerest appreciation and my sincerest apologies. But too many are otherwise, and they believe the ignorance above. They moan about the rich having all the cars they want. They believe socialized medicine will result in everyone being able to have the latest million-dollar medical procedures or the latest drug research has to offer (let alone can't comprehend why drugs cost a lot of money -- duh, R&D costs? Even if other countries don't want to respect that and pay as well?).

Heck, for years we at least let in foreign nationals to pick up the slack in our ever shrinking engineering student body. We let them have Green Cards and become American citizens with American families for generations to come. Now we don't even have that with indentured survitude programs like H1B, with a sponsoring employer who can deport them if they don't like the "terms" of their employment, let alone take a cut of their pay, which is already low because they they can't leave their "sponsor" and go to another employer and demand the same wages as Americans (no, we can't have that -- that would -- gasp -- basically be to just like hiring Americans in the first place at full pay!). People who actually come in the country legally and want to speak English (if they don't already) because they recognize the importance of communicating with the majority of the people already here.

The ideal immigrant is the one we do our best to deny -- especially when they often have educations in engineering. Not the IT H1Bs -- that's to keep IT costs low, even though we have plenty of Americans in IT (which is not engineering, although some can be engineering technology, but not in the overwhelming cases of H1Bs justified for IT) -- but the real engineers who actually studied concepts like engineering mechanics, microeconomics, etc... At least the ones that would agree with me. As much as I'll make fun of the average Frenchmen and their hypocritical history (criticize us on Vietnam?), I'll take a French engineer first and foremost any day! ;)

And yes, this was a rant. The one, cool thing about Generation-X is when we retire -- we'll have Generation-Y in their prime, income earning years. There are just so many of them that even if they are all working low-paying service jobs -- well -- there's just still so few of us retiring in comparison! I'm not worried for me -- just my parents. I just want to keep my money so I can help people the way I want, not what some majority thinks I should do with my money, not theirs. Oh, duh, I forgot -- I'm a stupid engineer who doesn't know better! Sorry, I promise not to think like a successful individual anymore.

Jeep Patriot 4x4 Off-Road: High Value, High MPG ...

2007-07-07T06:11:00.000-04:00

Work-in-Progress (WIP)

Quick Pictures (taken at the WORST time-of-day)

I've gotta get to work at my current client in Fairfield (CT), of which I will be doing all weekend as my last day is 7/13 before heading out to my new employer a couple of states away. I recently drove my "temporary car" up from Florida, a 2006 Chrysler PT/Crusier and due to "certain circumstances" I decided to finally get rid of it this week and purchase a 2007 Jeep Patriot (temporary Flickr set). I had previously had a 1996 Mazda B2300 (actually a Ford Ranger SE, right down to the VIN, except for the Mazda trim) but it broke down on my in january after 11 years and 165,000 miles. I wanted the Jeep Patriot at the time, but they did not come out until March (and not much beyond the initial 800 run until really April).

This is the Jeep Patriot 2007 in the Sport "E" package with the 4x4 Off-Road ("Freedom Drive II") configuration. Not too much is added beyond the "E" package other than the 458W 9-speaker Boston Acoustics speaker system. I don't recommend people getting this configuration if they want cruise control and other goodies, and either get the Sport "E" package without 4x4 Off-Road if they don't need it (keeping the price down), or just going for the "Limited" (as much of the electronics becomes standard in the Limited) if you want all-the-goods including the 4x4 Off-Road (plus some options that are only on the Limited, like a sunroof).

The Jeep Patriot 2007 dwarfs is "chick" counterpart, the Jeep Compass also sold as the Dodge Calibre, in size (read up on the Patriot's development if you want to know more about how it split into 2 models after the results of focus groups). But they are the same engine, frame, roughly weight (except for the 4x4 Off-Road version, although it's not much more), transmission (again, except for the 4x4 Off-Road version), etc... I like both the headroom and the some 2+ extra feet in the cargo area of the Patriot over the Compass/Calibre, which has more of a "cab forward" design that cuts into both cargo and height.

As far as everything else, for now, here is the review I submitted Consumer Reports (subscription may or may not be requried), based on my first 100 miles ...

Outstanding Value, MPG in 4x4 Off-Road

Pros: Inexpensive, Trail Rated 4x4 Option, Always well above 20mpg (even in city), 172hp 4-cylinder is "good enough," good cargo capacity/folding front seat and will fit 6'4" drivers, CVT2 with 19:1 low-speed option in 4x4/Off-Road

Cons: CVT advantage ends at 55mph, Chrysler needs to update Radio with text, poor towing capacity

Driving experience

If you want a SUV with pick-up, look elsewhere. The 172-hp 4-cylinder is "good enough" and will let you pull out in traffic, but don't expect it to be as fast as the same in Chrysler's smaller, lighter vehicles with the 2.4L, or your typical, 6+ cylinder mid-sized SUV. The CVT makes driving fun again, and allows you to get as good or as poor gas mileage as you wish. It's nice to slowly accelerate at 1500rpm saving on gas, and you can peg the engine at a consistent 5,000rpm+ when you need to move.

Definitely low road noise compared to other Chryslers and even other, smaller SUV/economy cross-overs. Engine purs at only sub-700rpm idle. Just feels good, "big enough without being
too big," enough that my wife (who dislikes standard-size cars and bigger minivans) loves it too.

My only complaint is that the CVT seems to lose any advantage after 55mph, and 65mph will peg the engine at 2750rpm, 70mph at 2900rpm, due to no higher gear ratio possible. I'm not a mechanical engineer (an electrical engineer actually), but either I'm not understanding something about gear ratios and torque at those speeds or Chrysler-Jeep still designs for only 55mph and no faster.

I paid the extra $2K for the 4x4 Off-Road model, with the upgraded CVT2 "Freedom Drive II," 19:1 gear ratio "low" gear, skid and other undercarrage improvements, and heavy duty electronics/components. Haven't extensively tested the 4x4 Off-Road mode but it's quick to put into L and 4WD and get a 19:1 gear ratio that keeps you from spinning in mud as well as not tearing up grass when it's wet. It's not the Jeep Wrangler's 38:1, but it can take almost as deep of water (19" v. 20"), is "Trail Rated" and Rubicon tested and you definitely won't have issues with road hazards in this model.

Definitely a great vehicle for city driving, including well over 20mpg in a SUV/4x4 Off-road -- Unheard of! Great turn radius for a SUV, better than some cars! I just wish the CVT/CVT2 had better, higher gear ratios so the engine isn't going past 2000rpm above 55mph. That 172hp is definitely able to at least cruise or give a little pick-up at 65-70mph with a better, more efficient gear ratio and should have offered it.

Several people have mentioned there is a "blind spot" near the left (driver) back -- well, it's worse on the Calibre/Compass versions! And I've run into the same with most newer cars as well. The nice thing about the Patriot are the huge side mirrors, at least on my 4x4 Off-Road -- Wow! Can definitely see everything on the sides, removing my worries about a "blind spot."

Comfort & convenience

It's a smaller SUV, but it definitely gives you space! Like one other reviewer, I have driven a PT/Crusier (which has a bigger, rather pathetic for a smaller vehicle, turn radius than the Patriot if you can believe that!), and while the PT's chassis makes it very low-loading for slightly more height (one of the reasons I prefer the PT over the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix, let alone the engine size difference), the Patriot has far more depth and volume -- especially if you don't remove the seats in the PT, which take up a lot of room. I'll take the convenience of "flat folding" any day over having to remove the seats when I get more capacity at the expensive of a little height. In fact, speaking on cargo capacity, I was going to buy a Honda CR-V a few years ago, but Honda has utterly destroyed that capacity in newer models, while offering absolutely nothing (not MPG or anything else, let alone no 4x4/Off-Road option) over the cheaper Patriot.

My 6'4" brother-in-law (who is a mechanical engineer with GM no less) would probably like riding in this more than GM's Equinox -- definitely more headroom over the same frame in the Compass/Calibre body. Not only do the back seats fold flat, but the front passenger seat folds flat as well, giving the ability to carry 4x2s internally, or just a lot of boxes.

I happen to like Chrysler's console overall, and the new Patriot and other designs clearly design a fold-out to hold an Apple iPod/Mini in the center console. The Compass/Calibre has a top compartment above the Glove compartment, the Patriot just has a smaller, "open" storage area -- probably due to the lack of as much depth before the windshield in comparison. But that's also the same reason you get another 2' (AFAICT) in the storage area (as well as the increased height).

The only negative on the Patriot is the towing capacity, a measly 1,000lbs. I think the 4x4 Off-Road version may increase that, but it's still well under most other SUVs, even small ones, that sport a 6+ cylinder. Case-in-point: If you want to tow 2,000lbs.+, you need a 6-cylinder, the Patriot is not going to satisfy, so you need to look elsewhere.

Comments

I skipped on the "Limited" and some $1,200-1,500 electronics extras, buying the Sport "E" package (up from the "D") which kept the price just above $22,000 for the 4x4 Off-road version, with the upgraded stereo system and a few, other extras (you could get the 4x4 Off-Road CVT2 "Freedom Drive II" for $20K if you skip the "E" package and these extras). If you want all the electronic extras, don't bother with the Sport as you'll hit or pass $25K and you'd be better off just getting the "Limited" package for a little more. At $22K for a solid, entry-level 4x4 Off-Road in the Sport "E" package, the Jeep Patriot is an outstanding buy. I just hope the resale holds well like other Jeeps, at least for an American car, if I ever decide to sell it (although I'm not planning to before it's death comes).

My package came with Sirrus Satellite radio, although not the upgraded 6-disc MP3 player, which I did want, but couldn't find within 150 miles without hitting a $25K configuration. The power the standard Chrysler radio (which has AUX IN as a standard -- thank you Chrysler!) can deliver the 458W, nine (9) speaker Boston Acoustics is definitely adequate, although I'll probably upgrade the radio at some point in the future. My biggest complaint about the radio is that it doesn't display anything about the Satellite but the channel -- no artist/title/etc... info like just about every other satellite receiver sold period. Don't know if the 6-disc MP3 version does, but Chrysler-Jeep shouldn't be selling satellite without upgrading that detail in its radios -- which look like they are from the '70s with that bright green, almost "calculator LED." Although I do want to point out the 2-speakers on the gate in the 9-speaker system is a nice touch, and great for tailgating at my Alma Mater's home and away games (Go UCF! Go Knights! -- now if they would only offer the Patriot in Gold! ;).

I owned a 1996 Mazda B-series (Ford Ranger, even Ford VIN) for 11 years, 165K miles -- no unscheduled maintenance (until that 165K), never even replaced the clutch (and I'm hard on clutches). I'm hoping this 2007 Patriot gets me at least 8 years, 120K miles, if not close to the same. I bought the extended 5-year/70,000 mile warranty. I'm hoping the Off-Road upgrades and the CVT2/Freedom Drive II are heavier duty than typical Chrysler transmissions (the CVT2 is still made in Mexico), and that's the only major item that I'm afraid won't last until at least 120k. We'll see, these CVTs -- at least the CVT2 -- are supposed to be as good as a manual in lifespan. By then I will be in my mid-40s, hopefully making even more money, and will probably revert (even if temporarily) back to being a child with a mid-life crisis that forces an impulse buy into a Chevy Corvette convertible (I hope I'm still practical when I reach that age, we'll see).

Rechargeable Li-Ion is not Non-Rechargeable Lithium (e.g., Li-Mn, Li-Fe)

2007-07-01T12:00:00.000-04:00

Additives 2007 July

Preface: I was very forward after writing this article and solicited input from any EEs that may be on various forums. I am an EE with computer option, a dozen years removed from school and far too focused on microelectronics in my career. I am not a power expert nor have I designed filters, regulators, etc..., but I do know what over-volting does to microelectronics as well as what happens to microelectronics when you throw voltage outside of that supported by the regulator feeding it. Thanx to JensR (a German Mechanical Engineer), SteveB (a British Electrical Engineer), CurtisR (an American) at the forums at DPReview and Wayne at PentaxForums (post 2) (an engineer with 20 years in the power conversion controller/power supply industry) for helping me address many details in this entry, and I will continue to do so as others provide such information.

After recently acquiring a Pentax K100D, I have run into no shortage of individuals tell me that it's safe to use Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) Rechargeable CR-V3 (RCR-V3) as replacements for Lithium Manganese (Li-Mn) [non-rechargeable] CR-V3 batteries, despite Pentax's (among other vendors') stern warnings on not doing so. It's not that rechargeable Li-Ion (or Lithium-Polymer, Li-Poly) is a poor choice for a battery in general, quite the opposite, Lithium is lighter and better in many ways than the heavier metal rechargeabales approved for use in the K100D. But it is the fact that the chemistry and nominal voltage in RCR-V3s are completely different than what Pentax designed the K100D for. Many of these proponents speak of the improved motor and auto-focus performance, and while I agree that not only will you will see better auto-focus, I'll even agree you won't damage your motors or auto-focus either. That has nothing to do with my concern, but the nominal, operational voltage provided.

If you have a Pentax K100D, there are some sound, quality approaches to getting solid performance with simple NiMH battery rotation and Li-Fe as a backup. This approach will not damage your K100D's sensitive, internal voltage regulators and microelectronics -- which do not handle over-voltage like motors, TTL and other, 5V+ electronics do. If it doesn't work for you, then you may have a rare, but possibly defective K100D with a voltage regulator that has a cut-out voltage set too high.

Overview ...

Of Voltage, Current, Current-Time (Charge) and Various Effects on Life
Commodity, AA Line-up: Alkaline, NiCd, NiMH and Li-Fe
Non-AA, Commodity Lithium: Li-Mn and Li-Ion
A Tale Of Two Impedances: Of Motors and Microelectronics
Best Practices for the Pentax K100D

Of Voltage, Current, Current-Time (Charge) and Various Effects on Life

Voltage is not what drives electronics. Voltage is merely the electric potential. And while there must be enough electric potential to cause motors to spin or transistor gates to change state -- overcoming the electrical impedance ala the resistance -- it is the electric current that provides the actual work and resulting power. Hence the common saying, "it's not the volts that kill you, but the amps (current)." The electric potential multiplied by the electric current working is the power utilized.

The Voltage of chemistry

Different cell chemistry types provide a range, although sometimes fixed, nominal operating voltage. Battery cells are used in series, a series circuit (one behind another, positive to negative, positive to negative, etc...), in order to provide a higher, nominal voltage. There must be enough electric potential to overcome the impedance to current flow. When a voltage is insufficient, the motor will not spin, the gate will not fire.

SIDE NOTE: Do not confuse "nominal operating voltage" with "open voltage." There are charging and select other advantages to a device which has a higher "open voltage" than its "nominal operating voltage" with load. For all intents and purposes in nominal usage, ignore "open voltage" or only compare "nominal operating voltage" to "nominal operating voltage" (and not "nominal operating voltage" to "open voltage" -- apples to oranges). The rare case of concern is when a chemistry can be charged to the point that it will provide the full, open voltage under a load.

The Amps of chemistry

Like voltage, some chemistries are able to provide varying limits of current, rated in Amps (A). Some batteries provide more real-time current than others, and will last longer (or will even be useful or not useful) at higher real-time currents than others. If a battery is unable to provide sufficient current at its voltage, total power drops, which brings down voltage as the current continues to try to flow through the device. There is a point where the voltage will drop enough that no current will flow at all. In a battery, there is a threshold where the real-time current provided will be insufficient due to the charge left (or even beginning if the battery is insufficient for the application), even though the battery will work in another device that draws less current.

In a series of batteries, the current remains the same, but power is increased as voltage is increased. And again, this has many advantages such as allowing chemicals with lower voltages, in common, easy-to-port sizes, to provide sufficient power to a device. Unfortunately, the great disadvantage is that when one battery is unable to provide sufficient current, voltage drops, so the entire voltage of the circuit drops, possibly rendering the battery pack useless.

Batteries can be put in parallel, including parallel banks of series circuits, in a battery pack. The advantage of this is that current can be multiplied. The disadvantage is that you quickly start needing more batteries and take up more space. Hence you will rarely see a portable device purposely designed with parallel battery circuits, just enough batteries delivering enough voltage to push the device, as batteries can always be replaced. Nearly all exceptions to this rule are added and external battery pack "options" which are purposely and are knowingly large and inconvenient (hence the "option," not the "standard" in the device).

Current-time is in-charge

The amount of overall "charge" in a battery is current-time, rated in Amps per hour (Ah). Milliamps are the metric prefix of 1/1,000 of Amps, and commonly used -- e.g., 1A = 1000mA. So it is not common to see a battery's charge rating in mAh, such as 2500mAh. Which is less commonly understood is how that number translates into something useful.

While you can measure current, there is no way to "measure" current-time other than full depletion of the battery. Likewise, in rechargeables, a "good charge" cannot be measured other than the full depletion and recharge of the battery. A simplistic "measure" of the "charge left" is often attempted by looking at the voltage output under load of a device. Hence the simple "full-half-none" battery indictor ...

Full = "I'm getting sufficient voltage and current"
Half = "I'm not getting sufficient current, so voltage has dropped"
None = "Voltage has dropped below minimum, so current is no longer flowing or effective"

The effects of memory and life

On the caveat of rechargeables, understand there are issues. Rechargeable alkalines tend to be good at holding their charge and don't have what's known as a "memory effect." The "memory effect" is when a rechargeable battery is not fully discharged, typically far from fully discharged, and tends to think the point where it is recharged is its new "empty" point (yes, that's over-simplified). The "fix" for "memory effect" is a "deep cycle" -- many full discharge and charge cycles, very time consuming.

Another issue to all batteries is "shelf-life" -- of both charge and lifetime of rechargeable. Some batteries last a long time and lose no charge. Others, select rechargeables, lose their charge within weeks ("leaky"). Some batteries last varying amounts of time based on the voltage contained during storage. I.e., some rechargeables will have their cells damaged faster when they are stored with a full charge.

I call this part of my batteries' life "being stupid" ...

They say you shouldn't mix battery types. Why is that? Well, potential in a series circuit changes, possibly drastically. Furthermore, the current also varies, especially under different loads. What does that mean?

Well, you get all sorts of interesting electrical effects, even if the different chemicals themselves never meet (which always provides interesting, pure chemical effects). A battery with higher electrical potential may attempt to increase the electrical potential of the other battery. Different batteries have different results when overcharged. Some heat up and melt, like alkaline or NiMH. And in extremely rare cases, some can catch on-fire (e.g., Lithium).

Another issue that can occur is select transient states and a cause-effect of one type of battery being destroyed. Some of these transients may just cause the circuit to stop functioning. Others may result in not merely a drop in any polarity, but a reversal of it. If you take common alkaline or NiMH batteries and reverse their polarity (put positive to positive), they'll heat up and melt. For lithium, a quick polarity reversal results in fire. It's one of the reasons why the FAA officially states that notebook computers should have their Lithium batteries removed when on airplane power, as most "explosions" (not really "explosions," but they are rather "intensively fed fires") of notebook computers are a result of an unforeseen and unexpected transient and polarity reversal when plugged in.

Commodity AA Line-up: Alkaline, NiCd, NiMH and Li-Fe

The AA battery is a cell type of a nominal voltage output of 1.2-1.5V.

The alkaline battery typically provides a nominal voltage of 1.5V or even 1.6V in some cases, including alkaline rechargeables. Rechargeable batteries, such as Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) and Nickel-Metal-Hydride (NiMH) provide a nominal voltage output of 1.2V or 1.3V in some cases. Newer AA batteries use Lithium, although the only AA "voltage compatible" Lithium technology is Everyready's (Energizer's) non-rechargeable Lithium Iron (Li-Fe) that provides a 1.2-1.5V nominal (a few other Li-Fe technologies, some even rechargeable, provide 1.4-1.6V and are not "voltage compatible").

Real-time current affects current time, memory effects current time

While some alkalines claim a capacity of 1,000mAh (1Ah) or even double that, that rating is based on a minimal 100mA (0.1A) draw. When increased to 500mA (0.5A) or higher, the total current-time charge deliverable can drop immensely, sometimes to 1/2 or 1/3rd actual time. At some point, such as a 1A or higher draw, even fully unused and fully charged Alkaline batteries will fail to provide a minimum 1.2V. Rechargeable NiCd can provide its full current-time charge in up to 5,000mA (5A) of real-time current. Rechargeable NiMH quality varies, with some only providing its full current-time at 1A, others at up to 2.8V+. Non-rechargable Li-Fe of 1.2-1.5V nominal voltage seems to be able to provide a solid 3A+ and deliver its full range of current-time.

SIDE NOTE: Energizer has some most excellent specification sheets with graphs of current-time (charge) against real-time current application for its current NH15-2500 Rechargeable (NiMH), E91 Alkaline (Zn-Mn) and L91 Lithium (Li-Fe) batteries.

NiCd has horrendous issues with memory effect, and you should never charge a NiCd cell that hasn't been fully depleted, although the "shelf-life" is not good, but not bad. Always use a recharger that can fully discharge NiCd cells. NiMH still has "memory effect" issue, but it's far removed from NiCd in that regard, and the regular quick charge (without discharge) can be done. Of course, NiMH cells are "very leaky," and can lose their charge in weeks.

The best of the best isn't always best because there is no best

What battery is best? On low-current draws, say 100mA (0.1A), the nominal voltage of 1.5V Alkaline, including rechargeable Alkaline (which don't have many "memory effect" issues, fair shelf-life), gives the best performance. On higher current draws, typically 1A, any NiMH will give you at least a solid 1.2V throughout its full current-time where most Alkalines will drop below 1.2V immediately. Between 100mA and 1A (1,000mA), it's a toss up. Beyond 1A is where you either need rechargeable NiCd (high "memory effect") or newer, higher-current NiMH (less "memory effect", although very leaky), or you may want to possibly look at the new, non-rechargeable Li-Fe (very long shelf life) which provide a solid 1.5V throughout their life.

Quick summary ...

AA batteries are 1.2-1.5V nominal operating voltage, no more
Alkaline (rechargeable/non-rechargeable) is 1.5V nominal, have good lifespan, but is for sub-1A applications, current-charge is 1000mAh and drops with high current
NiCd (rechargeable) is 1.2V nominal, tolerable lifespan, great for multi-amp applications to provide current-charge of 2000mAh+
NiMH (rechargeable) is 1.2V nominal, poor lifespan (leaky), great for 1A or even 2-3A (newer types) applications to provide a current-charge of 2000mAh+
Li-Fe (non-rechargeable) is 1.5V nominal, outstanding lifespan (decades) great for 3A+ applications to provide a current-charge of 1500mAh+ (typically 2x "effective" of NiMH at 2A+ applications)

Non-AA, Commodity Lithium: Li-Mn and Li-Ion

There are literally dozens of Lithium battery chemistries, with more are being discovered monthly. We already exposed just one implementation of just one chemical type in the AA section. We will cover the two most popular types, one non-rechargeable, and one rechargeable.

Li-Mn: CR-V3 is not double-double-A (2x AA)

The first mistake new owners make of CR-V3 (RCR-V3) batteries is that they believe they are two (2) AA cells. They are one, single Lithium Manganese (Li-Mn) cell of 3.0V nominal output packaged in a form that looks like two (2) AAs side-by-side. Likewise, the package is a purposely rectangle with round ends, and will purposely not fit a typical 2x AA battery compartment that is molded around each, individual AA battery.

"CR" Li-Mn batteries are the most popular type of Lithium on the market. Depending on the type, some are designed for low-current (sub-1A) applications but last much longer than Alkaline. Others are designed for higher current (2-3A) applications and last much longer than most 2x AA applications. The tolerances required for CR-V3 over 2x AA are minimal, since CR-V3 was designed for a nominal 3.0V. Voltage will drop as the non-rechargeable is in use.

Li-Ion: It's what's for your notebook's dinner

Increasingly, the Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) or its more solid and stable, but not quite as long (lifetime-wise) Lithium Polymer (Li-Poly), battery has found a home in all popular, higher current electronics. Li-Ion has a nominal operating voltage of 3.6-3.7, although its output varies more widely. Its open and charge voltage of 4.2V+. Indeed, most Li-Ion batteries have a "90-100% full" indicator for when it's providing at least 4V. I really and truly appreciate a vendor who designs its products with a Li-Ion or, better yet, Li-Poly battery, and no one should demonize a vendor who sells a proprietary Li-Ion battery pack for its products, it's just a sound, solid decision. Pentax did such for its newer K10D, but it did not for the K100D, which shares the CCD and other microelectronics with older models that used 4xAA or 2xCR-V3 batteries.

Unlike other, heavier metal rechargeable battery cells, there is a voltage "point of death" for Li-Ion (Li-Poly). This is below 3.0V, typically and always by 2.7-2.8V you can assume nothing in the cell will be usable. Many common Li-Ion battery packs (of 7.2/7.4-14.4/14.8V+ variety) contain cell protection logic to ensure Li-Ions do not reach this point, among other regulatory attributes. As such, Li-Ion batteries will typically "shut off" to protect themselves when voltage drops below 3.3V, especially since the regulator logic itself needs power to maintain the state over time. In fact, this is another area where common Li-Ion batteries have a "less than 25%," where it's moving into its "do not store me at this charge or I might not come back alive" aspect. Recommended storage is at 40% -- enough to maintain a long store, but not too much to degrade the cells. Storage at greater charges is not recommended because Li-Ion degrades faster with a greater, stored charge.

SIDE NOTE: Minimum voltage and the degradation of the cells over a full cycle is why you never deep-cycle Li-Ion. As long as you're using your Li-Ion battery, unlike NiCd/NiMH, it not only okay but actually good to "top off" regularly (the less full cycle, the better). When you're not going to use it for awhile, let it drain down to under half life.

Li-Ion RCR-V3: The largely "non-option" CR-V3 option

A new crop of "Rechargeable" CR-V3 (RCR-V3) batteries have started to hit many shelves. These are all Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) based. Although any Lithium battery is, chemically speaking, a "Lithium Ion," the term is used to cover the broad, non-standard variations of rechargeable Li-Ion batteries on the market. Unlike most other, non-Lithium chemistry rechargeables, there is absolutely no standard to Li-Ion, much less in the RCR-V3 space. That includes RCR-V3, you can often not use one vendor's charger with another -- especially since RCR-V3 itself is really a non-standard from the chemically different Li-Mn CR-V3, and different vendors try to use different terminals, voltages, regulators, etc... in ways that do not work with one another.

Some vendors are honest, and label them the true, nominal voltage of Li-Ion 3.6 or 3.7V. Others are not honest, and label them 3.0V to match Li-Mn. Some vendors market their RCR-V3 batteries as "regulated," which can mean many things. For some, that means they will not drop below the "point'o death" and "cut out" before then. For others, it means they will not charge to the "last 90-100%" and have a potential of 4V+ for a period.

Probably the most telling of RCR-V3 is how no vendor uses or supports them in their devices, and they create their own "battery packs" of 7.2/7.4V, 10.8/11.1V and 14.4/14.8V instead of using two (2), three (3) or four (4) RCR-V3s, respectively. That's not because they want to sell you a costly, proprietary battery. That's because they want to regulate the entire series of Li-Ion cells. The variance in multiple Li-Ion cells can be better regulated as a single unit than separate Li-Ion devices with their own, independent regulation -- as multiple units can quickly and exponentially result in greater variance than a single pack regulated as one.

There are a few "under-charged" RCR-V3 products on the market that keep the voltage purposely to 3.5V or less. But what does this mean? Instead of starting at over 4V or even achieving the nominal 3.6-3.7V for Li-Ion's physical properties, it's already "drained" (i.e., the Li-Ion capacity is not charge to anywhere near capability) to the point where it's providing only 3.5V maximum. So it doesn't even last as long as much cheaper NiMH! I have confirmed this with several K100D users now, and you'll note several that post on boards.

Side Note: To be fair, there are several individuals who have been using select Li-Ion RCR-V3 batteries in the K100D and earlier Pentax dSLRs that take CR-V3. These RCR-V3 designs typically use a 3rd connector for charging, away from the regulated output. MobyPower RCR-V3 and Delkin RCR-V3 are two vendors' products to consider, as they regulate their nominal power under 3.5V and possibly as low as 3.2V. So if you are absolutely determined to use Li-Ion RCR-V3 products in the K100D or earlier devices, please consider these vendors first, or anyone else who has a known track record of actually providing reduced output (and not merely their marketing). Unfortunately, several people have also reported MobyPower and Delkin units producing more than 3.5V with load, and over 4V with open voltage -- so test each and every unit several times! As such, if you're not willing to test (and even if you do), I cannot condone using RCR-V3 batteries with the K100D, as not only does Pentax not support it (and you will possibly void your warranty, as at least one person has documented), but I've seen what happens to microelectronics when you input voltage outside the range of its regulator -- especially the "hidden" effects to the logic (especially over time).

Summary ...

Non-rechargeable Li-Mn has a nominal operating voltage of 3.0V
Rechargeable Li-Ion/Li-Poly has a nominal operating voltage of 3.6-3.7V
It is not uncommon for Li-Ion/Li-Poly to discharge over 4V after a full charge (the "90-100%" charge)
Li-Ion requires regulation to avoid dropping near 3V and destruction of the cell
Li-Ion batteries never operate at 3V or below and cannot replace 2x AA, nominal operating at least 20% higher (and can be 40% higher)
Li-Ion batteries that provide less than their nominal 3.6-3.7V do not last long, and are still well over 3V

Being stupid ... revisited ... taunting super-happy fun battery ...

Some individuals have stated they mix 2x AA NiMH batteries with 1x RCR-V3 battery in a 4x AA product to "average out" voltage to 6V. Let's see here, 2.4V nominal on the one side, 3.6V nominal on the other side. In the "common case" scenario, delivering a 1.8V effective potential, the NiMHs heat up and melt over time. In the "worse case" scenario, let's say the NiMHs melt, whether they are conducting (a fully charged, thanks to the potential difference) or now delivering near absolute 0 current, and some sort of transient occurs. Li-Ion is bad enough on the table or even your lap when it catches on fire, consider what it might do if it's an even smaller device that you put up to your eye?

Sorry, I'm not stupid enough to save a few bucks and charge frustrations to tempt "super happy fun battery" up against my eye.

A Tale Of Two Impedances: Of Motors and Microelectronics

Unless an electrical device is completely solid state, there are typically two common types of impedances which require a minimum electric potential to overcome and will constantly take electrical current. One are motors, the other is microelectronics.

Steppenpot[ential]: Get your motor running ...

Most small motors require a nominal voltage of 5V or 12V today.

Motors are tough beasts with high gage (thick) wires and various, large relays and other circuit components. They can often take voltages far in excess of their design, and some will even run better so "over-volted." It is not uncommon for most 5V motors to run better without issue at 6V, and be tolerable up to 9V. After all, with increased potential with the same amount of electrical current more power and work can be done.

The speed of light is just too slow for CMOS

Most microelectronics are now CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor), and require nominal voltages of 3.3V to as low as 0.8V (just above the diode gate of 0.7V, long story).

Microelectronics aren't so tolerant of over-volting. Well beyond the vacuum tube, logic left the printed circuit board (PCB) long ago and today's CMOS transistor logic uses lithography to create multiple layers of silicon wafers with up to and beyond a billion transistor gates in the size and thickness of a fingernail now. As such, as CMOS has become exponentially smaller and smaller over time, with the traces are far smaller than a human hair -- closing in on merely a dozen atoms wide -- there is little left for tolerance.

Because they are so close, the constraints of voltage, timing and other details are exacting in microelectronics. The speed of light is too slow -- actually over 100x to slow -- to travel from one edge of your fingernail to the other in a single clock cycle. And because the traces are so close together, the smallest increase in electric potential can cause "transconductance," whereby the current "jumps tracks" inside a semiconductor. Over time, this transconductance can fuse traces, reducing precision of logic, causing glitches, hangs and, eventually, death.

Regulation to the rescue!

Since a lot of people are self-educated PC Tech's these days, if you've seen a computer hard drive, you've noticed it takes multiple lines of voltage -- e.g., +5V and +12V wires (plus ground) in the typical 4-pin Molex, or even +3.3V, +5V and +12V wires in the newer, 15-pin SATA/SAS standards. So, how do we deal with a device that is being delivering only one voltage? We regulate! Now without dipping into the countless of factors and options of regulation, just know a lot of it comes down to cost and, even more so in portable devices, size.

A common and size efficient approach to voltage regulation in portables is to deliver the electrical potential required to move the motors, and then divide or otherwise transform the voltage to run the microelectronics. While diodes, light emitting diodes (LEDs), simple ASIC (application specific integrated circuits) and other devices can run on as low as 1.2-1.5V (single AA), and other solid state devices with fairly complex microcontrollers run on 2.4-3.0V (2x AA) or more simple, 5V tolerant 3.3V CMOS integrated circuits (IC) go for 3.6-5V (3x AA), motors typically need at least 5V, so 4.8-6V (4x AA) is common place.

Dividing is tolerable with more simplistic microelectronics. But that still leaves a lot of variance. With today's complex CMOS and Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs), the difference of a single tenth of a volt can mean operation or increase transconductance. Most regulators are designed to provide an exact voltage, or minimize variation, based on input voltage. That costs in size. But in all cases of regulation, there is a range limit outside where regulation does not work, causes damage or otherwise abnormal operation, or just passes those variations beyond its limits on to the devices it regulates potential for.

And if the voltage regulator itself goes, well, it's just as bad. Same goes for the capacitors and other support electronics.

Over-volting is common, massive over-volting is not ...

Going back to PC Tech analogies, take a CPU designed for 1.2V as an example. You can probably get away with varying voltage to 1.5V or even 1.6V. But start to throw 1.8V or greater at it and you'll get noticeable and immediate transconductance (unlike heat, which takes time to "build up") and hangs, crashes or even a failure to start. Throw over 2.0V or 2.1V, and it's likely the transconductance will turn the CMOS layer's lithography into its own, imperfect matrix of new traces in a nanosecond -- permanent, done, buy another.

Now consider a 4.8-6V circuit divided into 1.2-1.5V, typical 4x AA, or even 2x CR-V3 (Li-Mn). You'll probably be fine with slight variances in your AA like 1.6V that even push it up to 6.4V total. Now consider using 2x RCR-V3 (Li-Ion), which is chemically impossible of delivering anything less than 6V, and has a nominal operation of 7.2V! That's 1.8V. And if you take it off the charger, and it's not clamped, it could be as over 8V high as 8.4V total, a whopping 2.1V divided!

Now these are simple examples using a simple divider, and a very complex (and larger and costly, especially if and as size is maintained as small as possible) regulator could possibly handle such within its nominal input. Of course, look at the regulators that are typical in a PC mainboard and you'll quickly realize that there's a lot of space to just support a device that uses 30-60W. Size that down to 10W and maybe just 2W actually being delivered to the microelectronics, it's still sizable and, even more so, cost to size.

When the vendor says it does not support a battery type, there's a reason, voltage and variance. It's not operational profit (maybe the reduced manufacturing cost for the regulator choice, but not support/operational/consumable sales). It's not to sell you more batteries when they support standard, generic 4x AA. It's to keep you from damaging your electronics or, worse yet, being stupid.

Best Practices for the Pentax K100D

Okay, with all that said, and assuming I've convinced you RCR-V3s aren't worth the bother, what should you use? It really all depends on what you're willing to deal with, both fuss and monetary-wise.

By battery (chemical) type ...

Non-rechargeable 2xCR-V3 (Li-Mn): Ideal. Maximum 6.0V delivery, minimal lithium variance (2 units). Sold at all battery shops, some other stores, for $20/set (2). Keep one (1) set of two (2) CR-V3 as your "backup." The charge will not "drain" after use, just as you actually use them.
Non-rechargeable 4xAA (Li-Fe): Eveready L91 (Energizer e2 Lithium) -- the ultimate backup. Maximum 6.0V delivery, tolerable lithium variance (4 units). Sold at virtually all stores for $10/set, buy them if and when you're dead-in-the-water. Keep one (1) set of four (4) as your "backup" in lieu of CR-V3.
Rechargeable 4xAA (NiCd): You don't need it, the fuss, the pain. The K100D pulls up to 2A, not 4-5A. At higher voltage applications (e.g., 14.4V notebook batteries), has utterly been replaced by Li-Ion for a reason.
Rechargeable 4xAA (NiMH): Get quality NiMH batteries designed for 2A+, not merely 1A (which will be "half" battery fully charged). Will run $10/set. Get at least four (4) sets (if not five, see below) and rotate (again, see below). Get yourself a charger than can fully charge and discharge. You can use a quick charger "on-the-road."

The bother of minimizing costs with NiMH ...

With that all said, if you want to minimize costs, you want to stick with rechargeables. And here, there is only NiMH, which has another "cost" -- your time and focus.

First off, it's not just any NiMH, quality NiMH batteries designed for 2A+ discharge. The overwhelming majority of "cheap" NiMH 2000-2600mAh batteries are rated at 1A, and won't deliver sufficient current in a device that closes in on 2A like the K100D. They will show up as "half full." The Sanyo Enelope 2000mAh and Energizer Rechargeable 2500mAh batteries can deliver the current the K100D needs. I have personally found the All-Battery.COM (Tenergy) NiMH 2600mAh not only incapable of such, but they don't even charge to 2600mAh (more like 2000-2100mAh).

Secondly, you must consider rotation. Keep two (2) to three (3) sets of NiMH batteries charged every few weeks and in your camera and bag -- which should give you 750-1,500 shots (flash to no flash). I keep one (1) set in the camera if I plan on using it in a few days, and two (2) sets ready-to-go. It's good to have at least four (4) sets so you're always charging one set. Charge one (1) set every week, so none of the three (3) sets between your bag and camera is older than three (3) weeks. It's also important to have "spares" if one (1) doesn't fully discharge and has to go through another cycle -- this will happen in one (1) out of ten (10) on average. That's a reason to actually have five (5) sets, one to cannibalize into the other four. It's also another reason to get a charger with a LCD or at least an indicator that a NiMH failed to fully discharge then recharge adequately.

Third, while you can use a "quick charger" on the road, you need to do full discharge/charge cycles. On-the-cheap, I have a $40 LaCrosse 900 series, but there are better for $100+, and non-display units for $20 or less (but still do a full discharge, possibly have a LED for a failed/incomplete cycle). It has LCD display to show you the exact discharge/charge. There is no reason why a NiMH battery should not have a full, 2500mAh (or whatever rating) at the end of the cycle -- unless it has some memory and failed to completely discharge. The kicker on the LaCrosse 900 series is that it has a default (you should change it) slow discharge/charge mode of 100/200mA (although it does give you better charges and longer battery life, it's not worth the issue). At such a low setting with today's 2500mAh+ batteries, it can fail to detect the DeltaV that the NiMH is fully charged and over-charge, melting the battery. Stick with 250/500mAh or higher and you'll never, ever see this -- or just get a better charger.

Get quality, 2A capable NiMH
Use a weekly rotation between four (4) NiMH sets, one (1) in camera, two (2) in bag
Get a full discharge/charge battery charger

Remember your backup ... carry 2x CR-V3 or 4xAA L91

You're going to forget at least once to do your NiMH battery rotation. And it'll be at a moment where you can't rush to the store. That's where having at least one (1) set of 2x CR-V3 or 4xAA L91 will save you. You can use and remove these sets as much as you want. They will keep their charge regardless of how often or infrequent you use them with your K100D, delivering the same, resulting total net current-charge. If and when you feel you've used them enough -- say 350-700 shots (flash to no flash), then make sure you have another set because you're only 50-100 shots away from replacing them.

When not to even bother with NiMH?

Of course, if you're finding that the catering to and nursing of NiMH sets is too much to deal with, you can always just buy CR-V3 or AA L91 batteries instead of dealing with NiMH. If time is your money, it's not a bad avenue -- especially if you use your Pentax K100D very infrequently, and you're spending more time managing your charge rotation than actually using the camera! ;) NOTE: I recently noted that Sams' Club carries the 12 pack (3x4AA sets) of the Energizer L91 for $19, making it just over $6/set to get a solid 500+ shots (possibly 1,000 without flash). Just a consideration.

Lastly, if a solid NiMH charge and rotation doesn't work for you, then you might have a rare, but possibly defective Pentax K100D. Some Pentax K100Ds seem to have a voltage cut-off that is way too high. It should not be 5V or higher, it should be around 4.5-4.7V, and otherwise would indicate a defective voltage regulator (or possibly one abused by high Li-Ion voltages -- another reason not to use RCR-V3!). If non-recharageable Li-Fe batteries, like the Energizer e2 Photo work, but every set of Energizer Rechargeable NiMH2500 or Sanyo Enelope (after ensuring they are fully charged) do not give you a full charge indicator on the LCD, you should bring this to the attention of Pentax.

What a cheap lens can give you (and not)

2007-06-24T02:59:00.000-04:00

As you may have heard before, I'm a photography noob. People say digital photography removes the requirement to be a photographer. In the traditional sense, yes. But it still requires a photographer to take solid photos -- even in the digital age, and especially when you have a Digital SLR (dSLR) camera. I'm still learning, and I expect to learn for quite awhile.

I personally moved from Point'n Shoot because the superzooms cost way too much money for way too little of what you really get. I wanted better shutter, reach with at least decent aperture, 3 frames-per-second shots and a few other goodies -- including shake reduction as I'd be standing, but without the costly "in-lens" route. See my first blog article, Digital Photo: Beyond Pixels and Zooms, for more on that.

So what can $500 get you in a dSLR? Everything you can see in my Flickr slideshow, Rhode Island National Guard Airshow (2007Jun23). Other than a few, poor photos posted purposely to illustrate issues (like being unable to capture, without blur, a F-18 breaking 500 knots), and those pictures that explicitly state they are "Cropped," my slideshow has unedited photos from full size (6MP 3008x2000, although Flickr resizes to 1024x768 or under -- 1024x681 in the case of my 3:2 aspect APS-C sensor). All of these Photos were taken with the Pentax K100D free standing -- no tripod and not even "bracing" my body (not even kneeling except for 3 other shots not shown). The lenses used where two (2) of the most basic -- it's DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 "kit" lens plus the $220 DA 50-200mm f/4.0-5.6 added lens which has a $150 mail-in rebate when purchased with the K100D (either body-only or body+lens -- which normally only has a $50, and the 50-200mm a separate $50). The Hoya 52mm circular polarizer used in a few shots is available for $20.

Again, unless the filename says "cropped," these are the original 6MP 3008x2000 except as resized by Flickr (to make 1024x768 or smaller). If there is any blur, I will comment on it under each photo, even if you can't see it here (other than the Angels 5 and 6 pass, you shouldn't). In all other cases, assume it's darn good down to the pixel, or maybe 1 out of every 2 pixels in the worst case. Yes, you will find better resolution, fidelity, reduced CAs and other things with some other dSLR solutions -- and you'll pay a lot more too, especially in the lenses. Of course, Pentax offers the K10D if you're an expert, shoot RAW all-the-time and know about 100x as much as I do about photography.

The biggest issue in using a "cheap lens" like the DA 50-200mm f/4.0-5.6 is that darn shutter speed at f/5.6+. I could only get 1/750-1000 on this fairly good (although not perfect) day. Adding the circular polarizer makes things impossible above 1/250-350, although it's quite nice for slower or still shots. Until the DA 55-300mm comes out (please Pentax, make it f/4.0 all-the-way), or I just decide to drop the dough for a serious 200-300mm auto-focus f/4.0 (or even f/2.8 in the case of 200mm) like the DA*60-250mm f/4.0 or the forthcoming DA*300mm f/4.0 prime, I don't see myself getting any better. Although that might be fine.

I bought the combo for American football-speed sports, not the 300-500 knot velocities of jet aircraft. For that, it will do fine. I'll still keep experimenting with other lens (like the new Vivitar 400mm f/5.6 manual I have, not used to take anything here), but I cannot complement the K100D enough for its price at $500 (after rebate in the US) for the two (2) lens kit+telezoom solution, the built-in shake reduction (SR) and other things that just make it "easy" to do everything with program and shutter priority, a slight EV stepping or bracketing and little else.

How To Fill Out Rebates

2007-06-16T21:14:00.000-04:00

With the exception of Hanns-G** LCD rebates and the shipment issues I've experienced with eCost.COM**, I have received virtually every rebate I've filled out -- and that's about 50 in the past 12 months (if not more). I've received checks from alleged "trouble" retailers like TigerDirect and the like. I believe the reason I get my rebates returned is because I don't give the processing agent an excuse to not find something. I hope these simple recommendations help others as well.

Here's my recommended procedure ...

1. Read all directions when you buy
2. Biggie: Enumerate all items (if they are not already)
3. Biggie: Attach items to letter (US) or A4 (ISO) sized paper
4. Biggie: Enumerate all included pages
5. Biggie: Supplement hand-written fields with printed/stamped address
6. Verify everything
7. Make photocopies
8. Use the correct postage

1. Read all directions when you buy

That includes the rebate begin and end periods -- especially before you buy. It's not unheard of for resellers to advertise before a date, although most consumer laws (especially for those of us who are Florida residents) are now causing repeated offenders some serious legal issues. You also want to be certain you buy the correct SKU item or product/model number, and you want to be aware of the rebate periods -- including any post-mark date.

But most importantly, you want to ensure you have all the required items and the required procedure down, which brings me to ...

2. Enumerate all items (if they are not already)

Every rebate form should list everything required. Good rebate forms will have every item already enumerated. Some include more than one item next to a single number. Others may just have a bullet list. Poorly written rebate forms will have no, easy-to-see list. In any case, always ensure the items to be included are enumerated.

I.e.,

For items already enumerated with 1 item to include per line, use as is
For items already enumerated, but some have more than 1 item per line, annotate with letters (if existing enumeration are numbers) or numbers (of existing numeration are letters)
For bullet lists with 1 item per line, add numbers as long as they are 1 item per line
For bullet lists with some having than 1 item per line, use numbers and numbers+letters as appropriate

E.g., a rebate form that says ...

This rebate form
The original UPC code and a copy of the invoice

Now becomes ...

This rebate form
The (a) original UPC code and a (b) copy of the invoice

You will use this enumeration (1 - 2a - 2b in this example) in #4.

3. Attach items to letter (US) or A4 (ISO) sized paper

Do not just stick any items, especially not cut-outs or register receipts, into the envelope. Anyone who has done any corporate expense reports for some time will note that accountants and bookkeepers don't like this either. You can be sure that rebate processing departments who are looking for an excuse to deny your rebate will use this to their advantage as well!

Instead, take a letter (US) or A4 (EU) sized sheet of paper, or whatever matches the size of the rebate form, and attach any loose items to those sheets of paper. Attach by using cellophane/clear tape to the top portion of the item. Attach as close to the top of the paper as possible. For long (longer than 11") register receipts, attach the top of the receipt and fold any portion underneath. This will also make it easier when you make photocopies in step #7.

4. Enumerate all included pages

Now the reason you enumerated items in step #2, and attached any loose items in step #3, is so you can match that enumeration on the included pages themselves in this step. 1-2-3, 1-2a-2b, etc... as necessary to line-up items in/on your included pages to the enumerated items in your rebate form. Write those numbers (or numbers+letters) in the upper-right corner of every page! Now they have no excuse because even a moron can count, right along with the rebate form!

Since most rebate processing is outsourced, rebate processors see a number of different forms. Yes, it's very likely that -- especially if you bought and submitted early -- your rebate processor could be seeing the form for the first time! If you make it easy for them, they are less likely to give you trouble. After all, they probably are compensated (or their employer is compensated) by the number of rebate forms they process -- possibly also by how many they reject.

If your form is well organized and saves them trouble, they are far more likely to process it and save rejections for those submissions that are hard-to-follow and would take more time. Sad, but true.

5. Supplement hand-written fields with printed/stamped address

Now most rebate forms require the forms to be handwritten. If you're like me, you have poor hand hand-writting (even my printed handwriting went to junk by the end of college). But just because you can't use printed labels for your address in the form's fields doesn't mean you can't attach a printed or stamped address label as well for "clarification/verification." In fact, the best place for your printed or stamped address level is right in the upper-right corner, along with your page number (or number+letter) for each item. So feel free to do it, and I recommend you do it, on each and every page in the submission.

Now they have no excuse that they couldn't read your correct and full address. Yes, you included a printed or stamped address label, but you didn't do it in the fields on the rebate form where it had to be handwritten -- you followed those rules and requirements. You are merely including an address level for clarification/verification. Furthermore, you do it on every page in the submission -- with your name and address on every page in the submission -- so the processor has no excuse for "misplacing" any page either!

6. Verify everything

This one should be obvious, but verify everything. Ensure your numeration is correct, all fields are filled out and you have the correct info -- including a UPC code and not some other bar code, like a shipping code. Don't laugh, I almost did that once. When in doubt, include both codes if you're really unsure. E.g., HP likes to put up to 7 bar codes on its products -- yikes! You can include all bar codes on the same page as the UPC code is enumerated to be included on.

Verify again after you write the address on the envelope -- which you do before you sealing the envelope with the contents, right? Now, unfortunately, because most rebate forms are purposely vague -- by "hand written" they may also include the envelope itself. So other than your return address, which can be stamped or a label (at least I've always done that), you may have to hand-write their address, and it's probably good to just always do that. Write clearly and, as I always do, put the Zip Code (especially if it's a 9 digit) on its own line in the lower-right hand corner -- a very big 5 or 9 digits. Mail carriers like that, and most of the time, the rebate processing address is a P.O. Box. so its routed almost directly by that 9 digit zip code.

7. Make photocopies

This one should also be obvious. You want to have copies. If anything, it's always good to have copies of receipts and UPCs for any high-priced item for insurance purposes. Keep a hanging or other file folder just for rebates and high-priced items. It can't hurt to do this in general, for your own records.

8. Use the correct postage

Lastly, use the correct postage! Not all letters will be under 1oz (28.350g ISO). Use your post office's self-service machine and make postage with the exact zipcode encoded if you really want to be sure. Otherwise, put two (2) stamps if you are unsure. I often just put two (2) stamps anyway because most rebate submissions of mine are almost always 0.80 or 0.90 oz and "close enough." If your local postage is metered on every 25g (and not 30g), then you're hitting it even more than us Americans! Yeah, it costs me another $0.41 to "be safe," but it's worth it on $10+.

Conclusions

I hope these procedures -- especially items #2-5 which you may or may not have thought of prior-- will help everyone with their rebates in the future. To summarize what this does ...

A. Like with any accounting/bookkeeping submissions, loose items are a no-no with rebates too
B. Anyone can count and match-up numbers (or numbers+letters) from the rebate form to pages
C. If you write as poorly as myself, backing up the hand-written info with a printed address is ideal -- do it on every page of the submission too
D. The easier it is to processor your rebate, the less likely your submission will be "accidentally lost" (with that "statistic" left to submissions less well organized)

**Hanns-G Note: OfficeDepot.COM paid my Hanns-G $100 rebate on a 19" LCD some 9 months after my submission. They apologetically stated they were aware that many people have not been receiving them from the product vendor (Hanns-G), so they paid the rebate instead (despite the cost -- $100 in this case, and clearly a net loss for them), and included a $5 gift card for my extended patience. I've also noticed that OfficeDepot.COM has since dropped all Hanns-G products, and any reference on their web site is only for remaining stock in stores. I would advise everyone to avoid all Hanns-G rebates at this time. At the same time, ordering anything on-line from OfficeDepot.COM has the exact opposite consideration -- if the vendor doesn't honor a rebate, OfficeDepot.COM will (which I think is Florida law -- at least for retail outlets in Florida).

**eCost Note: eCost.COM took over one month to ship an item, which was after the rebate period had expired. Even though I included the order date and shipper tracking information that showed eCost did not ship in time, the rebates were still rejected. I had tried to cancel the order twice -- once on December 20th and again on the 22nd, as I ordered December 6th and it was not going to make it for Christmas. They shipped after New Year's anyway, of which I received it just after 30 days from invoice, which was outside the rebate period. Again, including documentation didn't help my cause, and it was finger-pointing from then on. I would advise anyone to avoid eCost.COM if they are interested in timely receipt of any product (let alone within a rebate period).

Commodity: DDR2, 250GB 2.5", Video Card Redux

2007-06-14T23:17:00.001-04:00

Just a few, commodity updates ...

Vista's Marketshare, or Lack Thereof, is Your Gain

Microsoft loves to quote Vista sales. What Microsoft doesn't tell you is that their numbers, just like in the past, are merely just the licenses to OEMs and boxes sent to resellers. They are not the actual consumer or resale sales, much less not even boxes shipped with Vista at OEMs. Reality: Vista sales projections are way off, way, way off, the mark. But what does this have to do with commodity PC hardware?

DDR2 memory overproduction, massive -- and I mean massive -- over-production! We're talking 20% operating losses for many memory vendors in Q1! Why? Supply is well over demand, as people aren't upgrading for Vista because -- again -- Vista is not actually selling well, and not leaving the PC OEM as much as the Microsoft "shipment" figures show.

Memory, largely DDR2 memory which was ramped up in production as existing and new 2006+ AMD and Intel system designs were targeted, has dropped to as low as 20% as before -- as much as an 80% drop over just 6 months ago when Vista hit. DDR has also dropped, although to a lesser extent. DDR2 should continue to drop, but only a little more, through Q3 before rising again as supplies are finally reduced and vendors aren't replenishing them. Some are even switching their lines to other, similar, simple cell semiconductor devices, such as EEPROM ("flash").

So now, or possibly within the next month after a few more, small dips, is the time to buy to get some of the best deals. A single 1GB DDR2 can be had for under $25 per DIMM (such as in a 2GB "kit" of 2x1GB DIMMs) after rebates, 2GB DDR2 for around $75+ per DIMM (such as in a 4GB "kit" of 2x2GB DIMMs) after rebates. SO-DIMM prices notebook DDR2 are similar, with maybe a 25-50% premium. There is plenty of marketing non-sense, with sticks rated beyond DDR2-667/PC2-5300 that require over-voltage (beyond JEDEC compliant 1.8V), so be sure to read the specifications. I covered much of this (along with other DDR/DDR2 considerations) in my earlier blog article, Spring 2007 PC Assembler's Quick Guide ...

Western Digital, Others, Release 250GB in 2.5"

For a good while now, the leading capacities in 2.5" disks were 200GB at 4200pm, 160GB at 5400rpm and 100GB in 7200rpm. There is always the "sweep density" in raw data transfer rates for single user usage versus "spindle and seek times" in general, as well as heavy multi-task I/O usage. The "sweet spot" for notebooks has typically been 5400rpm, as the added 40GB in 4200rpm wasn't enough to give the "sweep density" a boost over in 5400rpm's spindle/seek. At the same time, 100GB in 7200rpm was a good 60GB less, and really didn't pay much for its premium as the "sweep density" of 160GB in 5400rpm came out best in single user usage.

But now Western Digital has released its 250GB Scorpio 5400rpm drives below $200, and Seagate and other vendors have their new 5400rpm and 7200rpm products coming on-line. As such, 160GB has become very commodity around $100 -- just above $0.60/GB -- and even 250GB is almost worth their price at under $0.80/GB for leading capacity. There may also be some solid 7200rpm products in a 200GB shortly as well, possibly challenging 5400rpm for the mainstream. But for now, 160GB or 250GB (at the leading edge) 2.5" drives of 5400rpms are still the "best bang for the buck."

Video Card Redux: 6600GT/7600GS ($30/50), 7900GS ($100) and 8800GTS ($250)

Well, Computex has arrived, and there is absolutely no word on a possible nVidia G81 "7900" series or any offer of a follow-up AMD-ATI X600 offering beyond the initial 2900 product. As such, waiting for a G81 or other option is now very likely to be a 6+ month wait, if not longer. This definition changes my view of the high-end.

In my previous "Commodity" update, at $50 or under, I mentioned the nVidia NV43 w/128-bit GDDR3, the GeForce 6600GT, available for $30 after rebates. It's a great deal for the price. Likewise, when you find the nVidia G72 w/128-bit DDR2, the GeForce 7600GS, available for $50 (or less) after rebates, it too is still a great move for the price. Continue to avoid anything GeForce 6200, 7100 and 7300 since they are much slower with 64-bit memory, and often no cheaper (if not more in cost). Wait for the deal on various deal-sites for the 6600GT or 7600GS if you don't want to spend more, let alone understand the new GeForce 8500 with 128-bit DDR2 offers you nothing better (forget the DX10 marketing, as I mentioned before in comparison to the old Ti4 v. FX debate on the prior DX9).

Likewise, in the previous update, I mentioned the entry-level nVidia G71 w/256-bit GDDR3, the GeForce 7900GS. It is now finding itself regularly available for $100 after rebates, and even under $125 without a rebate. The GeForce 7900GS is definitely the "card for now" that gets within 25% of the top performance of any G71/7000 series, so don't look anywhere else. Although there has been a few deals on the 8600GTS/GT with 128-bit GDDR3 that brings them down to near or even slightly under $150 after rebate under, it's hard to best the price-performance of the 7900GS around $100. So if you want to spend only $100, the 7900GS is your baby, period. Continue to avoid GeForce 8600GT/GTS w/128-bit GDDR3 products at $200+, because you can do better, and don't bother paying anything close (let alone more) for the 7600GT w/128-bit GDDR3 which doesn't come close to the 7900GS w/256-bit GDDR3.

Again now given the fact that no G81 8900 series is to be even mentioned, the existing G80 GeForce 8800 series is still the king. The 8800GTS 320MB w/320-bit GDDR3 card has now hit as low as $230 after rebate, and $250 after rebate is becoming a regular deal every few weeks. So since the 8800GTS 320MB can be had for $250 after rebate, there is no reason to pay around $200 for a much, much slower and less capable 8600 w/128-bit GDDR3 series, period. Just don't let the sales and marketing fool you -- you either should save money now and spend only around $100 on a 7900GS w/256-bit GGDR3, or just go the 8800GTS w/320-bit GDDR3 route for $250 (or under) in its 320MB incarnation.

Wait for the deals in all cases ...
- $30 for 6600GT, or $50 for 7600GS (forget 6200, 7100 or 7300 -- and the 8500 is no better)
- Near $100 for 7900GS (forget 7600GT or 8600 series, let alone 8500)
- $250 (or even significantly under) for the 8800GTS 320MB

No reason to buy another nVidia option, period -- and don't even look to ATI if you run Linux (their drivers are still well beyond nVidia).

Now if you really want to spend over $300 for a GeForce 8800GTS 640MB or AMD-ATI Radeon X2900, or over $500 for a GeForce 8800GTX 768MB I won't stop you -- especially since the G81 GeForce 8900 was not even announced for future available at Computex. But I don't like spending that kind of money when the $250 (or less) 8800GTS 320MB gets you close enough at 1920x1200 or lower resolutions. If you're running at higher resolutions, then you probably have money to burn on a video card.

SLI Comment:

The 8800GTS 320MB is a much better option than two (2) 7900GS 256MB cards, despite the added $50 (assume you already have a SLI mainboard)
The 7900GS 256MB is a much better option than two (2) 7600GS 256MB cards
The 7300GT is a joke (even dual-256MB) in SLI, just get a 6600GT 128MB (yes, even though it only has 128MB) or 7600GS 256MB instead

In other words, unless you go out and drop the serious dough for (2) 8800 series cards (let alone they should be the 8800GTX 768MB), forget SLI. Buying two (2) cheaper cards capable of SLI aren't going to best one card of the better quality. Sorry to those of you who bought the GeForce 7600GS or, worse yet, 7300GT SLI marketing non-sense.

Seagate Free Agent Pro Forgets eSATA Cable For a Reason

2007-06-03T21:31:00.000-04:00

I picked up a pair of Seagate Free Agent Pro 750GB drives from Best Buy for $176/each last week when they were on-sale for $199.99 - 12% (Rewards Member). Seagate, like most other hard drive vendors, have been selling their external drives for cheaper than their internal versions. With eSATA (external SATA), I assumed it didn't matter anymore. Boy I was wrong!

I thought Seagate merely skimped on the eSATA cable in the box (only USB is included in the E2 models, USB+FireWire for the E3 models with the FireWire option) for cost reasons. That's hardly the case. As I've now been reading, in addition to the overheating issues, the Free Agent Pro's eSATA connector is very loose! Indeed, trying a number of eSATA cables now, I can verify it is very loose!

In Windows XP, it will just "hang" the system at some point without warning, sometimes during boot. In Linux, it's a bit more tactful. It keeps trying to step down the ATA signaling. I'm using very short (19" eSATA) cables here, to a Silicon Image 3132 ExpressCard/54 (notebook) as well as the nVidia nForce 4xx series (desktop using a bracket). At some point, when it drops below Ultra16 (UltraDMA mode 0), and tries to flip to PIO, it will hang in Linux as well. It's not merely the shielding or length of the SATA cable, but it clearly seems like the "loose" connector edge on the Free Agent Pro itself. Using USB, of course, solves the issue -- something I have not had to do with a Beyond Micro USB+eSATA enclosure.

This clearly leaves a very poor mark in my book with regards to Seagate, and I think the lack of an eSATA cable was intentional because of this design flaw/oversight. I mean, the whole reason for the "Pro" series is eSATA support, which is drastically faster than USB or FireWire (long story). But I'm not the only one to experience the issues with the connector, and I plan on contacting Seagate very shortly to find out just what cable I am expected to buy to get solid contact and performance.

PS, and yes, I know about the 15 minute power down default. That's not the issue. Not only did they come back up on access (within 3 seconds, even in Linux), but I use the Windows utility (when the drives were connected to USB) to disable that setting anyway. That's not the issue at all. Ironically enough, their decision to not include an eSATA cable is probably costing them more in support costs (let alone the fact that no one stocks them in retail yet).

Now Commodity: 22"/24" LCD, 750GB, 6600GT/7950GT

2007-05-17T22:48:00.000-04:00

Just a commodity PC component update for all of you self-assemblers who continually upgrade at the right price points.

LCD Widescreen 22" now $200+, 23-24" now under $500

For those considering the plunge into a LCD, or a larger LCD, the 22" 16:10 widescreen is now the commodity panel. Unless you can swindle a 19" 4:3 standard (typically 1280x1024) or 16:10 widescreen (typically 1440x900) for $100 after rebates, it's probably better to just go 22" 16:10 widescreen (typically 1680x1050) for $200+, sometimes the price without rebates. Definitely avoid the 20" 16:10 widescreen, as it's no longer the commodity panel, 22" widescreen has taken over. And with these larger panels, DVI is almost always standard, and HDCP support (or even HDMI) becoming more commonplace as well.

Side Note: Some vendors are claiming 1080p (1920x1080p) out of some of these monitors. Understand that is marketing. They typically only have a native resolution of 1440x900 (e.g., there seems to be a new 23" panel at this resolution for around $250) or 1680x1050 but accept a 1080p signal and scale down. This is not native and not recommended at all if you want true 1080p for HD-DVD/BluRay output.

For those want to go larger, do not even consider a $400-800 LCD 26-32" for your computer. Resolutions of 1280x720/768 16:9/16:10 (720p) to 1366x768 16:10 are not recommended at those sizes for nominal computer desktop usage. They are great for gaming, Xbox 360 HDTV (720p, not 1080i, mode), etc..., but they are horrendously poor visually for desktop usage. Your eyes will complain compared to ever using a real LCD designed for computer usage.

Instead, the new crop of 23-24" 16:10 Widescreen LCDs with a true 1920x1200 resolution are now dropping to even under $500 -- sometimes even without rebates (and often that price, or near, with rebates). These monitors sometimes offer component or HDMI in, although with more and more HDCP support on a DVI connector, can be converted from HDMI. Sometimes it's better to go down even 3-8" in size to get a picture that is 10x better for desktop usage, high-res gaming and true, native HD-DVD/BluRay resolution output.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB is now hitting almost $0.25/GB

With the release of the 200GB/platter x 5 platter Hitachi 1TB drives, Seagate's proven, reliable, high performing 187.5GB/platter x 4 platter 750GB drives are now hitting under $200 --- making them virtually as commodity as the 500GB sizes of previous generation flagships. I always recommend buying the largest, commodity disk drive and recycling your old drives into servers, your spouse/kids computers, etc... instead of buying down. So at this point, the 750GB is definitely now part of the club for consideration.

Side Note: For 24x7 enterprise usage, purchase the Seagate Barracuda ES version of this drive at the 20-40% premium. The Barracuda ES models end in "NS" (available only in SATA), compared to the standard Barracuda 7200.10 "AS" (SATA) and "A" (PATA) models. The ES versions are those that test to higher tolerances, lower vibration, etc..., although they are still the same, "commodity" size/material drive (and not a Cheetah or similar, "enterprise" design of typically 73-300GB capacities).

GeForce G82 brings GeForce NV43 and G71 down

I've been advocating the GeForce G72 for awhile -- namely the GeForce 7600GS (DDR2) at $50 and the 7600GT (GDDR3) at $80 after rebates (avoid the GeForce G73, 7300LE/GS, series in general, even the under-clocked G72, 7300GT, too). I've also been advocating a specific GeForce G71 incarnation, the entry-level GeForce 7900GS (GDDR3), when it can be had for $125 or better after rebates. Well, there's been some changes abound.

With the release of the GeForce G82 GPU, namely GeForce 8500-8600 series of products, more and more older GeForce products have come down in price.

Some of the older NV43 products, namely the GeForce 6600GT (GDDR3), are now hitting as low as $30 after rebate. This card will smack any GeForce 7300 series silly, even though they only have 128MB of GDDR3. They are still quite good performers, and can often beat a GeForce 7600GS too, which only has DDR2 and suffers because of it. Don't bother with the GeForce 8500 at all, the 6600GT can actually challenge it, and is a crapload cheaper now.

Another notable are the higher-end G71 products, like the GeForce 7950GT and others, are now hitting under $150 after rebates, and will continue to do so. They are typically 25+% faster than the lowest-end G71 in the GeForce 7900GS -- of which any G71 will smack any G82 silly (sometimes double or even triple performance) -- even the GeForce 8600GTS, let alone the lower 8600GT (and laughable 8500). You really have to go with a G80, 8800 series, for $300-500+ product to get solid DirectX 9 and even newer DirectX 10 performance.

It's very unlikely that even forthcoming DirectX 10 titles will make up for the very large delta between a G71 and G82 (just like the old GeForce NV25 Ti4000 series did over the GeForce NV30 FX series), so saving $50+ by just sticking with a solid GeForce 7900GS or 7950GT is a better move. Either drop the $300-500+ for a 8800, or wait for the predicted G81/8900 series. A great "wait" card is a 7900GS/7950GT for $100-150 -- you'll be able to get what $500+ buys you in a 8800 today in a sub-$300 8900 card in the fall/winter.

Memory Prices: Even 4GB Kits are $50/GB

2007-05-13T17:54:00.000-04:00

Commodity unregistered, unbuffered DDR and, even more so now, DDR2 SDRAM memory has finally dropped to sub-$50/GB now. DDR2 can even be had for as low as $20-30 after rebate for a single 1GB 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM DIMM, and sub-$50 for a 1GB DDR2 notebook SO-DIMM.

As DDR2 has become the sole memory type sold in new notebook computers since mid last year (both AMD Socket-S1/638 and Intel Socket-M-P/478), and it's hard to find a new desktop with anything but DDR2 -- both AMD (Socket-AM2/940) and Intel (LGA-775) -- DDR2 has correspondingly become more commodity and dropped more than DDR. As such, if you are assembling a new system, recycling DDR is less and less of a consideration, with 2GB DDR kits (2x1GB) as low as $70-80 without any rebates (around $100 in notebook SO-DIMMs). If you only had 1GB or 512MB, it's a no-brainer, as 1GB DDR kits (2x512MB) are $40-50, and 512MB not even worth saving (or buying, you might as well go to 1GB/2x512MB or 2GB/2x1GB for the price).

Even 4GB Kits, like the Patriot PSD24G667K (2x2GB) DDR2-667 (PC2-5300) CAS5 are now $200 ($50/GB) as of mid-May (which I bought for my Linux workstation at work, run development suites as well as VMWare for test Linux installs and Windows when I need it -- should work on a stock Intel 945 chipset at 1.8V). So if you're looking to "future proof" your density, definitely look at 2GB/DIMM DDR2 options. More than 1GB/DIMM is difficult to secure in DDR, and can be non-standard. DDR-400 (PC-3200) also only allows one (1) DIMM per channel per JEDEC specifications, and use of two (2) DIMMs per channel drops the signaling back to DDR-333 (PC-2700). The standard, commodity 240-pin DDR2 interface is designed with addressing densities up to 4GB or even 8GB/DIMM, so there is that upgrade path. Again, density is an important consideration as JEDEC specifications don't allow more than one (1) DIMM per channel at higher signaling (like DDR-400/PC-3200 or most DDR2/PC2 speeds).

Side Note: To use more DIMMs per channel, you're looking at other platforms -- mainly not-so-commodity AMD (LGA-1207) and Intel (LGA-771) workstation/server with Fully Buffered (FB) DIMMs, which use eight (8) 32-bit (36-bit ECC) banks -- equivalent to four (4) 64-bit (72-bit ECC) DIMMs -- per channel.

The main thing to beware with DDR2/PC2 DIMMs, as I highlighted in my Spring 2007 PC Assembler's Quick Guide, is voltage. JEDEC specifications state the voltage for DDR2 is 1.8V. Most vendors follow this specification for DDR2-533/PC2-4200 through as low as 4-4-4-12 timing, and a few others may for DDR2-667/PC2-5300 through as low as 5-5-5-15 timing, but many violate it for "low timed" DDR2-667/PC2-5300 and especially so for DDR2-800/PC2-6400 timed below 6-6-6-18. These latter DIMMs may require 1.9V or even higher (and many will require 1.9V to just get 6-6-6-18 at DDR2-800, when they work fine at 1.8V and 5-5-5-15 for DDR2-667). While many "enthusiast" mainboards can typically over-volt the DIMMs, possibly without pre-configuration or reseting the CMOS jumper after changing them out, these non-standard timings in the SPD can have real issues with standard, mainstream OEM PCs and other mainboards. As always, check the reviews first to see if the non-overclockers are having issues (those with stock Intel mainboards -- which most PC OEMs use -- are always good litmus tests).

Otherwise you may be pre-setting the DIMMs to manual settings for lower signaling/higher timing speeds before putting them in -- assuming these aren't your first DDR2 DIMMs (and have another pair to boot with). You may be SOL and doing some RMAs (assuming your reseller is open to such when the part is just incompatible, but not defective) for a replacement product.

Digital Photo: Beyond Pixels and Zoom

2007-05-06T00:01:00.000-04:00

Work-in-Progress

There are so many articles on digital cameras out there, but I've yet to find an article that discusses the basic differences (let alone real concepts) between commodity, digital point'n shoot and digital SLRs ---especially from the "marketing hype" of megapixels (MP) and superzooms (8x, 10x, 12x -- even 15x now) that claim to be "SLR-like." I know this article won't be perfect, and will seem to go "too deep" in some areas while ignoring other concepts other articles cover, but I just wanted to cover the basic concepts on the "sensor size" and the resulting lens aspects that I haven't seen in a single article by others.

I hope it explains why I recommend IGNORING those $350-500 point'n shoot cameras and consider either just sticking with a sub-$200 6-8x point'n shoot, or just make the $400+ plunge into dSLR, possibly only spending another $200 on 1 or 2 more lenses. And to that end, expect a forthcoming article on how I moved into dSLR with the Pentax K100D (and it's current rebate offer), with three (3) lenses to round out my capability over any point'n shoot "superzoom" option for around $650 total.

Marketing: Megapixels and Optical "Superzooms"

Today the digital camera market is flooded with countless digital camera options. Everywhere you turn, it's megapixels from five (5) starting under $100 to a whopping ten (10) starting under under $200 along with "optical zoom" of 3x, 6x or even 8x, 10x and 12x (let alone even one 15x now) in the "superzoom" range at $300-500+. Compact, consumer, "pro-sumer" and "near-dSLR" (which will be discussed) are common terms which reviews try to categorize digital cameras as.

And yet, semi-professionals won't touch them. These users, or reviewers, quickly point out the poor noise characteristics of images beyond ISO200 in poor lighting, shutter speed and focus issues, especially at higher zooms, etc... And despite the monikers and marketing, these limitations seem to be clear barriers that keep many people away. Why is that?

Image Quality: "Sensor" Size Matters!

As most digital camera owners already know, most digital cameras (ignoring CMOS and other solutions) replace an area of film where an image is captured by opening the camera's shutter with an a solid state charged coupled device (CCD). The common, modern point'n shoot digital camera of of today typically has a 1/2.5" or possibly a 1/1.8" CCD. The 1/2.5" CCDs are now 7.2MP commodity with 8.0MP just coming out and 1/1.8" CCDs are hitting 10MP and will be 12MP soon.

I will not dive into the history of the imperial fractions (which DPReview addresses here), but understand that an 1/2.5" CCD has an image sensor of approximately 5.8x4.3mm in size and an 1/1.8" CCD has an approximate 7.2x5.3mm size. That is little more than 20mm square and a little under 40mm squared, respectively. That's quite a bit of density in such a small area, at least compared to 35mm -- also known as "135 film" and, in the digital realm, "full frame" -- which is 36x24mm and over 800mm squared -- 20-40x the area!

Side Note: Most consumer CCDs are 4:3 aspect, whereas 35mm (and APS-C) is 3:2 aspect.

Even today, "full frame" digital cameras are still very cost prohibitive ($5,000 although some are dropping to half that as of late), although this may change in the near future (discussed below). There are some fully digital 35mm cameras and there are many solutions for adding digital "backs" to existing, professional 35mm cameras. The megapixel range for these solutions started at over 10MP years ago, and are crossing 20MP now. Well beyond what a consumer needs and almost overkill, especially considering the 20-40x increase area, hence quality of light and image hitting the sensor.

And yet there are additional considerations, especially cost-wise.

Lenses: Zoom--er, Zoom "Range"

Today's point'n shoot digital cameras over-market their optical zoom, which is really their "zoom range" and not really an precise indicator of actual magnification or field of view (FOV). In general, the definition is applied rather ambiguously, although there does seem to be some uniformity in the point'n shoot industry now. I.e., the base, 1x zoom seems to be just slightly larger lens than the CCD -- nearly 1:1 -- and almost everything else is a multiple from that.

E.g., on a 1/1.8" CCD point'n shoot camera, the sensor is around 7.2mm horizontally, and the smallest zoom lens setting is around 7.5mm. If that camera has a 8x zoom -- again, really "zoom range" -- then the largest zoom lens setting is around 60mm. In comparative 35mm terms, this is effectively around 37.5-300mm.

In reality, at 35mm, the "normal eye/focus" 1:1 view is not considered actually at 35mm, but 50mm. What that boils down to FOV terms depends on focus, but is around 40 degrees at infinity (widest angle). Most point'n shoot cameras dip some 25% below this, giving a good 50 degrees FOV (around 0.75x "normal") and then narrow (zoom) from there. So for a typical point'n shoot, FOV is around 17 degrees for 3x zoom (2.25x "normal"), 8.5 degrees for 6x zoom (4.5x "normal"), 6 degrees for 8x zoom (6x "normal"), 5 degrees for 10x zoom (7.5x "normal") and so forth. These are just approximation and will vary when the "widest" (smallest) lens size differs greatly from the horizontal CCD size.

The most important thing here to note that the "nice thing" about point'n shoot with small CCDs is that you can have a great zoom range -- like 6x, 8x, 10x or even 12x -- and the lens size is still 50mm or smaller at its longest zoom, typically no more than a few inches sticking out maximum. Which brings us back to 35mm. A zoom range of 4x -- like 28-105mm (which would be like having a common point'n shoot of 0.5-2.0x zoom) -- is already a good sized barrel, yet doesn't cover much "zoom" in the traditional point'n shoot view.

Which is why 35mm is about interchangeable lenses. Wide lenses with zoom ranges that are at the "normal view" (50mm) and below as well as zoom lenses that go from the "normal view" and beyond, sometimes they already start well beyond. There is also the concept of a "prime" lens, a lens that has a fixed size and, therefore, a fixed zoom. Now you're talking cost. Also add in the fact that with such a large sensor area for image fidelity, you're also starting to see an added cost in lens quality -- as any cheap lenses will quickly show poor image quality too.

In other words, the cost of image quality starts growing exponentially with the cost of multiple lenses, which should be of craftmanship that also grows in cost, exponentially.

APS-C: Commodity Digital Single Lens Reflex (dSLR)

Around 2003, a much larger, common sized CCD broke the $1,000 barrier, one close to Kodak's Advanced Photo System "Classic" (APS-C) of around 25.1x16.7mm. At roughly 400mm squared, APS-C sized CCD sensors give about one half the area of 35mm film, while still an area an order of magnitude greater than a 1/1.8" CCD. As such, they became the mainstay of the new crop of affordable, entry to mid-level digital Single Lens Reflex (dSLR) cameras.

The concept of the Single Lens Reflex (SLR) on its own is often mis-represented to consumers coming from point'n shoot cameras. SLR simply means you are seeing the actual set of reflections/refractions of the image behind the actual lens that will be projected on the film, or in case of digital SLR, the sensor. Most consumer cameras use an off-set viewfinder that is not the image that will be captured, and newer digital point'n shoot cameras add the real-time capture/preview from the CCD on to the LCD.

But SLR and, subsequently, dSLR is often stated to represent a series of technologies and features, including interchangeable lenses, more advanced capture (including many frames per second, fps) including added digital processing capability and filtering in the case of dSLR, etc... In a nutshell, when you're paying for the larger CCD (let alone in the case of a CMOS sensor), the physical SLR mechanism that clearly adds cost in mirrors and lenses, etc... adding the other features is a no-brainer, and clearly adds a great number of features in the digital SLR arena over the digital point'n shoot.

The majority of today's prosumer and semi-pro dSLRs are APS-C sized. In addition to the immediate size advantages of the body over a "full frame" 35mm, there are lens size considerations. Now only a 200mm lens is required to get a 35mm effective 300mm lens. And any minor defects in the lens often doesn't show up nearly as bad as a "full frame" 35mm, allowing for the use of lower-costing, newer, often marketed as "digital" (really APS-C) sized lenses. The diameter of theses "digital" interchangeable lens also now shrinks to around or sub-50mm instead of 60-75mm. All the while, at the same time, several vendors still use standard 35mm mounts so older, compatible 35mm lenses can be used, preserving some investments some photographers have made in their lenses.

Much better quality combined with an option of lower costing lenses (that have 4x zoom ranges) has made the entry-level dSLR a more interesting option -- especially now at sub-$500 for many bodies -- than $400+ superzoom point'n shoot cameras that are incapable of the quality (especially in lower light), rate of capture, etc... Especially as more and more dSLRs offer point'n shoot like modes -- making them as simple or as powerful/customizable as consumers want.

dSLR: Know What You Are Getting Into

Ironically, consumers who come from the digital point'n shoot world are sometimes unhappy with dSLR -- both feature and monetary-wise. Know some simple facts.

The first one is cost. Lenses cost money. No, it's beyond that, lenses are often more of the money maker than the dSLR "body." Many -- no, virtually all -- vendors including a really crappy (with exceptions) "kit lens" with the camera -- they want to sell you lenses. In most cases, don't bother with them, just get the body. Although that also means that you have to either consider dropping a few hundred dollars more for just a lens, or buy one used. After all, there is little sense in going SLR at all for its precision fidelity if you're not going to get at least one, solid lens. At the same time, you can do lenses "on a budget" by only building your kit of 2-3 lenses, and getting used or "good value" lenses.

Side Note: Now the good news is that once you make an investment in a lens, some vendors often support their lenses for a long time, which means they make future products compatible with those lenses (remember, the camera body itself isn't their big money maker). Pentax, a name not very well known with consumers, is extremely well known among anyone who has taking a photography course in the last quarter-century (let alone anyone using a film larger than 35mm). Their M42 and K mounts are still used, and even their pre-digital auto-focus (and auto-aperture) lenses are usable on their newer dSLR cameras. This is very unlikely to change in the future either, with one caveat (as I'll discuss below). And there is always the option of purchasing used lenses.

Another biggie is how "image stabilization" is "replaced" from the standpoint of the point'n shoot familiar consumer. Sometimes, it's not in dSLR, and a simple point'n shoot with image stablization would be better for those that just want to "go around and shoot" in their hands in good lighting. Originally most dSLRs addressed stablization at the lens, adding very significant cost ($500+ for a 100mm+ lens type). But a few, newer dSLRs, like the Pentax K100D and K10D, as well as the Sony Alpha, address it as best as it can in the body, for all lenses (although the Sony's mount doesn't have nearly the existing lens family as the Pentax K mounts do). This is a consideration if you want to zoom without a tripod and you've chosen a camera and/or lens (depending on the solution) that does not offer any.

Yet another big show-stopper is the size. dSLR bodies, despite how small they may try to make them these days, are bigger than most point'n shoot cameras -- even superzooms with their fixed zoom lenses in comparison to a dSLR with just a standard 4x zoom range lens. If you're finding you just want a camera for taking pictures in good lighting, don't need more than 4-5x "normal eye" away (marketed around 6x zoom), or even just 2x "normal eye" (marketed around 3x zoom), then you don't need a dSLR -- and you'll have less to pack when you travel. If you want a camera that has can do poor lighting or deal with other, environmental concerns, can take wide-angle shots of scenery (a big deal reason to go SLR), etc..., then you probably want SLR.

Side Note: Now there are some "pancake" sized "prime" (single lens size) that reduce the camera size and shrink the overall size (sometimes even to less than a superzoom with its fixed zoom lens), but you'll pay for them ($300+ new) and be limited to its fixed zoom (often around 1x). Of course, you still often build a "lens kit" of at least 2-3 lenses for any dSLR -- typically at least a wide zoom lens (for scenery to normal shots) and a narrow lens (for portraits to longer range zoom). In many cases, the "kit lens" can suffice for the former, although many consumers find themselves eventually replacing it.

And, lastly, the subtle, almost hidden set of issues are the difference from some common point'n shoot approaches. One is the lack of real-time preview on the LCD that digital point'n shoot users are used to. It's only only available on some very late model (and very expensive) dSLRs. The viewfinder, the whole basis of SLR, is why people go dSLR -- what you see is what you get, and a far more clear than what can be put on an LCD, including for focus (especially if manually focused). Some newer models can give you a preview on the LCD, but for the most part, you'll be in the viewfinder for quality. And there are, slight usability differences as well -- although today's entry-level dSLR can be used almost like a point'n shoot, only offering the power and customization for those who want it.

There are plenty of 1/1.8" CCD cameras that give you a good range of zoom with "good enough" -- even for 8x10" in some cases -- with good lighting. As long as you aren't capturing too much motion, or doing professional portraits, they work perfectly fine for 90% of moments.

Why I Personally Moved to dSLR

Personally, I finally made the move to dSLR for the lower lighting, sports and, to a lesser extent, scenery aspects -- with a lot of caveats and some clear "thresholds" that were finally crossed.

I am not a knowledgeable photographer in the least bit, and I'm just getting familiar with many concepts. Despite being a traditional engineer who has had theoretical courses in physics and basic optics and many other concepts commonly used in photography, I had never, neither used nor even consider many simple, photo concepts technically/practically at all. I was happy with a point'n shoot until it came to lighting and sports, as well as the limited FOV for scenery. Especially sports, as I so tired of tracking photos at events and throwing away 80% of the shots, let alone couldn't snap off pictures quickly. And I don't know how many times I lost 100% of the shots in low lighting situations.

The major barriers that prevented me considering dSLR were clearly cost and select features. Heck, I was even still set on buying a 1/1.8" CCD (boy does just about every 1/2.5" CCD I've used suck for my purposes) point'n shoot superzoom for $400-500 just a couple months ago. I didn't want to spend much more than $500 in the worst case, and being that I attend sporting events as a regular spectator, I can't exactly drag in a tripod, so I needed some sort of equivalent to point'n shoot image stablization.

By chance I saw the prices on the Pentax K110D at a few resellers after the $50 rebate, which brought it down under $350. The Pentax K110D doesn't have the same "free floating" CCD (which Pentax calls "Shake Reduction") like its more costly K100D so I disregarded it. But then I started reading up on the newer, APS-C "digital" marketed K-mount lenses -- such as the Pentax DA 50-200mm that would give me the basic reach I wanted for sports -- I took a renewed interest. The Pentax DA 50-200 is not only sub-$250, but they were offering it with a $150 when purchased with just the K100D body. So for around $500 after rebate, I could have a dSLR with "shake reduction," a good, low-cost, "point'n shoot equivalent 8x zoom," and add to it.

The used lens options for the 30 year-old Pentax K-mount finally sold me, especially after the reviews I read on the unit itself and various lenses that could be had for around $100 used or "just not commonly sold." And that's what I'll cover in the next blog post. But before I do, I want to comment in a final section of this blog article on the future of APS-C sized dSLR versus the near-future reality of commodity, "full frame" (35mm) dSLR.

Will "Full Frame" dSLR Become Commodity? Probably ...

There is a raging debate whether or not dSLR will move away from its APS-C sizes if and when "Full Frame" (35mm) CCDs become commodity.

Right now there are only a few "Full Frame" dSLR cameras, which use CMOS sensors and hover around $5,000 (with some dropping under $3,000 as of late), which offer close to 20 megapixels. And at those prices, there are other digital "back" options to same or even higher quality 35mm (135 film) cameras, let alone even a handful of 60mm (60x45mm aka 120 film aka "medium format") options that even Pentax is jumping into with its forthcoming 645D at 18MP and full 645 lens compatibility (the film-based 645 series is still sold, Pentax being one of the few vendors that still offers such a medium format camera).

But despite the downplay of the future, there will be a day where 35mm "full frame" CCDs becomes commodity, possibly as early as 2010 and will likely offer beyond 20MP. So there's the real possibility that all of the APS-C sized, "digital" marketed lenses will be useless for those cameras (let alone cameras designed only for 6-10MP), and become increasingly less commodity in a possibly shrinking APS-C sized dSLR camera (of aging 6-10MP, maybe 12-15MP at last model) market from then on-ward. And who knows, with the digital processing, lenses may not need to be as perfectly designed as they were now, just as some digital lenses today can be made cheaper and lighter without a lot of perfections that drives the costs up to $500, $1000 or even higher just a few years back before dSLR took hold. So does that mean any investment into an APS-C sized camera and selection of lenses is not a good idea?

At this point, it's really hard to say. I'm personally not dropping any serious money into APS-C sized, "digital" marketed lenses. As I'll cover in my review, other than the Pentax DA 50-200mm, I haven't and I probably won't -- other than maybe considering the Pentax DA 16-45mm if and when I decide to drop the $300 (after rebate) for it. I'm personally trying to stick with standard, Pentax K mount (but late AF model) 35mm lenses at this point, so I can recycle them in the worst case (as well as buy them cheaper used in many cases as well).

So the only suggestion I can make to anyone is not to drop over $1,000 in APS-C sized lenses today, and not even a few hundred for those of us that are clearly consumer-level and not even semi-pro. Be smart, buy a solid APS-C sized lens when they are well regarded for the price/performance (like the Pentax DA 50-200mm for Pentax, or the Sigma 17-70mm for Pentax, Canon, Nikon and other mounts, etc...), and consider what quality, existing 35mm mounts -- while still having all the compatibility/features on the newer dSLR models -- would be a good investment if and when "full frame" 35mm dSLR becomes commodity.

Building Kernel 2.6 and Modules on Red Hat systems

2007-04-18T11:20:00.000-04:00

I'm shamelessly re-linking one of my own, past blog entries under a different entry so it is hit by Google and other search engines. Several people I work with and who read my blog have asked for a HOWTO and history on how to rebuild the kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and CentOS) 4 and 5 (which are Fedora Core 3 and 6 based, respectively) and seem to miss my past post here ...

Kernel 2.6 On Fedora-based Systems

I also need to update my ABI/API index of Red Hat Enterprise v. Community releases, and plan to do so shortly -- especially with the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) project starting up.

Spring 2007 PC Assembler's Quick Guide ...

2007-03-28T18:29:00.000-04:00

2007 March -- work in progress (WIP) / quick, conceptual dump

There's not a day that goes by without someone e-mailing me about PC components and assembly. The overwhelming majority of these are home consumers, although some are for some high I/O throughput server designs. I've addresses many basic server concepts in both my print and blog articles, so I will offer this blog article for the home consumer crowd. I'll try to release a new blog article every six (6) month with major changes, and these articles will be -- more or less -- a "Quick Guide" and not too in-depth.

NOTE: This article is not trying to sell you on PC self-assembly or why you should do it. If you're not sure you should, don't read this article, it's for those who already self-assemble their PCs. In fact, I personally use a sub-$1,000 17" 'desktop replacement' notebook (with a dual-core CPU, GeForce Go 7600 256MB and 1680x1050 video display, 2GB of memory and 160GB disk) as my primary PC now, so my self-assembled system is really for when I need more power.

Overview:

Rule #1: Seek at least 2 reviews for every product
Everything starts with the mainboard (aka motherboard)
GPUs (video/graphics) change twice as fast as CPUs
Power, cooling and enclosures
The lesser known things to know about memory
Storage options, what not to do, and redundancy
The extra frills, and budgetary mistakes

Side Discussion:

Free/Fake RAID (FRAID) dos, donts and conversions

Rule #1: Seek at least 2 reviews for every product

With the exception of warranty and service (or reseller in the case of DoA, Dead on Arrival), vendor brand name means squat today. Everyone outsources, even Sony to OEM Chinese fabs, Seagate to Maxtor (now the same company), etc... That means you need to research the exact model (and sub-model/revision if need be) and I recommend you seek at least 2, in-depth reviews for each and every component, possibly combinations of components if at all possible.

This also means you don't merely want to rely on "favorable reviews" on the reseller's site. You want to see more technicial expertise at times, or at least look at the explanations in the negative reviews to find some lesser know facts. After all, you're going to find some "lesser known facts" in this article, among others out there. So look for those "lesser known" facts that -- "hey, it works!"

Everything starts with the mainboard (aka motherboard)

We're not talking servers or even workstations here, so throw those out. We're talking about desktops, systems that will run 8 hours a day, maybe 14 hours in a full day (unless you have a serious gaming addiction). So we're talking about mainboards (aka motherboards) as inexpensive as consumers want to pay for their needs.

Key mainboard attributes:

Size and expansion
Integrated features and video
AMD v. Intel, single or multiple core

Size and expansion

In the PC self-assembly world, ignoring Intel's OEM-centric BTX, there are two (2) common standards: ATX and MicroATX. ATX has seven (7) expansion slots spread over a 12" width, and is typically 9.6" deep (Extended ATX is 13" and typically found in only workstation or server mainboards), but can be as shallow as 8". MicroATX has four (4) expansion slots spread over is 9.6" wide and can be as deep as a square 9.6", but is commonly 8" or less. Both ATX and MicroATX share a common 6" port cutout, so they really only differ in size and expansion.

At first glance, MicroATX and ATX seem to only have a 2.4" difference in size. But in reality, the actual, total "area" as typically implemented really adds up. MicroATX cuts corners not merely in expandability, but advanced feature set because it may be a single chip chipset, resulting in a smaller area and fitting into some near small form-factor (SFF) cases (e.g., MicroATX towers, desktops and cubes can be quite small, and almost as small as a more limited expansion chassis, but with 2 extras slots and drive bays). ATX tends to sport additional expansion, including newer multi-video cards options, more ports, extra on-board options, etc...

Integrated features and video

Features are really about what you are going to do with your system. If you're like me, I like either the on-board video or a single video card (we'll get into this later on GPUs), two hard drives, one optical drive and maybe one "device bay" (see the final frills section). That's my typical desktop. I don't like something that is big, I prefer something that is portable, so I've gone MicroATX since 2004 because the feature sets in MicroATX systems now sport almost everything. I still put a MicroATX board into a chassis that can take a full ATX power supply (and not a more limited MicroATX, which will talk about when we get to power). And despite the common belief, smaller cases can actually house solid cooling, power and have other, positive considerations besides just portability.

The more features lacking, the more you may end up going to an expansion board for them if you need them. If you don't need them, then you don't need the expansion, so MicroATX becomes more of a consideration. Some key, integrated features include ...

Audio: 2, 4 or 6 channel, maybe even optical output
Network: 10/100 or 10/100/1000 (although I wouldn't use the 1000Mbps in most desktop systems for a server)
SATA and other expansion ports
Integrated video: ATI, Intel, nVidia, SiS or ViA, PCIe slot or dual/tripple PCIe (aka "SLI" or "CrossFire")

Integrated audio varies wildly. More and more mainboards today, even MicroATX, come with a 6-channel audio solution. The question is how much CPU off-load (or increased CPU load) does the on-board DSP/codec give you. A lot of on-mainboard audio, regardless of board size, leaves much to be desired, and you may look to a PCI or, fairly new for audio, PCIe x1 audio card. I have personally put in Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS PCI cards even on expansion-limited MicroATX mainboards, because most audio DSPs/codecs put a lot of strain on the I/O-CPU for more than 2-channel output. It is very rare for a mainboard to have a quality DSP/codec, and most go for low-cost RealTek ALC6x0/8x0 solutions.

Network is in the same boat as audio, you can get mixed results on either ATX or MicroATX. Many desktop GbE (gigabit ethernet, 1000Mbps) would croak under a server load and result in little better than FE (fast ethernet, 100Mbps). Others actually put a good amount of SRAM (48-64KiB/port) and have decent performance. It all depends on the MAC+PHY combination.

SATA and other ports can be a consideration. Most mainboards are now coming with at least four (4) SATA ports and one (1) ATA channel. You'll want at least (1) ATA channel for an optical drive (see the storage section on why), more than one if you have legacy ATA hard drives. If you really need more than four (4) SATA ports, you might want to invest in a real hardware controller anyway, although I won't tell you what you need.

Video is really the main differentiator, and for home consumers (and gamers), probably the #1 consideration.

For people that want cheap -- around $50 -- the nVidia C51/C61 with integrated NV44 (GeForce 61x0) also known as the nForce 410/430 chipsets have an integrated video powerful enough to run Vista and even older DirectX 8 games (although they support Shading 2.0 for DirectX 9, their performance will not do well). In fact, these integrated Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) chipsets will beat the GeForce FX 5200/5500/5700LE, so it's cheaper to upgrade to a new $50 C51/61 mainboard (with a future PCIe upgrade option) than pay $50-100 for a GeForce FX AGP card. These chipsets are only available for AMD Socket-754/939 and newer Socket-940/AM2, although AMD's new (ATI-based) G690 chipset for Socket-AM2 is also comparable in performance.

If you want integrated graphics, Intel, SiS and ViA are lackluster, and not Vista capable. Yes, the newer Intel G955 options say they are Vista ready, have partial Shader support and look good in artificial benchmarks, but they are not up to the standard of the nVidia C51/C61, the AMD G690 or even the aged ATI Xpress 200/1100 integrated graphics.

If you want to go with the upper-end, then you need a mainboard with a PCIe graphics slot -- which is everything today. You may want to look towards the newer nVidia nForce 500 series (than the older nForce4 or GPU-integrated nForce4x0), which is available for either AMD or Intel. Go SiS or ViA at your own risk. Intel's own chipsets work well with an add-on PCIe graphics too -- the 975X is the premier professional, although the 965 is solid for consumers too. If you want to use more than video card, then you'll definitely need to look to a full ATX mainboard for either nVidia's SLI or ATI's CrossFire (MicroATX options exist, but I don't recommend them as they wipe out virtually all other expansion). And the price of those options will be over $100, sometimes close to $200.

In all honesty, I don't think much of SLI/CrossFire unless you are going to buy two (2) of the top-end graphics cards. The reason why is because two (2) lower-end graphics cards rarely equal the price-performance of one (1) higher-end graphics card, as I'll discuss later. That's the reason why I've stuck with MicroATX personally, but if you're willing to pay for the top-end mainboard and top-end pair of video cards, then you'll want ATX.

AMD v. Intel, single or multiple core

First off, forget the Intel Celeron D, it is not dual-core, and it's a slouch, period. there are far better options unless you find a really cheap mainboard+CPU deal (I'm talking under $50) with AGP and you have a very high-end AGP card (e.g., GeForce 6800) that you want to reuse. Pentium D, although dual-core, not much more desirable either, despite the over-clocking potential (for you enthusiasts out there), with the new "price war" between AMD and Intel.

In fact, the reason why this is under the "mainboard" section has everything to do with cost and performance and your choice of CPU as a result of the mainboard.

If you want "cheap," get a $50 nVidia C51/61 (GeForce 61x0/nForce 4x0) mainboard, put a $50 Sempron/Athlon 64 in it, and you'll get damn fine performance for most desktop applications and even aged (pre-DirectX 9/Shader) games, as well as Vista. Upgrade to dual-core for $50 more, which will be more responsive in multiple applications, although will help gaming very little. Choose Socket-939 if you want to reuse any existing DDR SDRAM memory, or just go Socket-AM2 with DDR2 SDRAM if you have to buy memory.

If you want to put in a solid game performer, buy a $100 nForce 570 or Intel 945 series, put in an $200 Intel Core 2 Duo -- preferably a 6000 series (the 4000 series isn't holding itself against AMD Athlon x2 at the price points) -- and at least a GeForce 7600GT or ATI X1950Pro or faster (see the forthcoming video section). Intel is matching AMD's price cuts, even if delayed, and the Intel Core 2 Duo 6000 series is clearly the "bang for the buck" on performance. Quad core gives you little, unless you are really building software and want to throw "make -j8" or something (if you don't know what that means, don't worry about it).

Your mainboard really defines your video and CPU choices. For cheap, Vista (or even Linux Compiz) capability, the nVidia C51/61 (or newer AMD G690, although for Linux it's still an "unknown" quantity) with a cheap Athlon 64 or entry Athlon x2 is a $100 combo -- especially in a smaller MicroATX form-factor. If you want to game, look to a $100+ mainboard with an nForce 500 series or Intel 965/975, add your own accelerator, and you can still often find then in MicroATX, although you'll definitely need to go ATX for SLI/CrossFire.

Linux Notes: Of all chipsets, I've found the nVidia nForce4/4x0 series to be the most Linux compatible, GPL/MIT driver ready chipset. As far as integrated video, as long as you don't need 3D acceleration, the C51/61 (NV44 GPU) is also excellent for X-Windows releases in the last 2 years. If you want 3D acceleration without binary drivers, Intel is an option, but understand the "open" drivers lag Intel's own proprietary drivers heavily in performance and features (especially the total lack of hardware accelerated OpenGL 2.0 support, shaders, etc...), and are only available on Windows anyway (unlike nVidia's which are a "shared object" for all OSes -- FreeBSD/Linux/X, MacOS X, Windows).

GPUs (video/graphics) change twice as fast as CPUs

With the mainboard+CPU question out-of-the-way, we can talk graphics. The problem with graphics is that they double in performance twice as fast as CPUs. If Moore's (Intel's) Law is that CPUs double in performance every 18 months, nVidia's Law is that GPUs (graphical processor units) double in performance every 9 months. So in 3 years, where CPUs increase in performance 4x over, GPUs will increase in performance 16x over.

Which is why your graphics is what you will upgrade the most, or just not care about the most. ;)

If you're still looking at or want to "recycle" a nVidia GeForce FX 5200/5500/5700LE or ATI Radeon 9200/9600 (pre-X) card, forget it. With nVidia's C51/61 chipset-integrated GPU in a $50 mainboard, you're already behind it. Today, you can get a nVidia GeForce 7600GS for $50 when on-sale, or even select ATI Radeon X1600 products for not too much more. And with the forthcoming nVidia G81+ products and ATI R600 series, prices will drop again.

Here's the deal ...
- Under $50 -- get out of here, you might as well use chipset-integrated (and save money)
- $50-60 -- the GeForce 7600GS on-sale, is also often passively cooled (0 noise)
- $90-100 -- the GeForce 7600GT or possibly ATI Radeon X1650Pro
- $130-150 -- the GeForce 7900GS or ATI Radeon X1950Pro (some would recommend the latter)

Things to avoid ...
- nVidia GeForce 7300LE (junk, maybe 50% better than chipset integrated)
- nVidia GeForce 7300GT (mega-underclocked 7600GS)
- ATI Radeon lower than X1600 (except maybe earlier X800/850 products)

If you're wanting to spend over $150, I would wait. nVidia is going to release its G81/82/etc... GeForce 8600/8900 and other series products shortly. These are die-shrinks of the already "big/costly" G80 GeForce 8800GTS/GTX. I don't like the performance of the 8800GTS compared to a cheaper GeForce 79x0GTO/GTX (or ATI's high-end options for that matter), and the 8800GTX is big and power-hungry at its 130nm size for $600 (ouch). In all cases, prices will come down, so the most I advocate is the 7900GS/X1950Pro at this time, and the 7600GT is a good start (and faster than an older GeForce 6800GT).

Okay then, what about SLI or CrossFire? What about them?

If you're going to be pushing 400W just for the video and dropping $500+ on video cards, you might as well just get an 8800GTX for $600 and save a little power usage. After all, you could go SLI by buying a 2nd 8800GTX at a latter date when they come down in price.

In fact, that's a repeat theme I see. Don't buy two (2) cards for SLI (or CrossFire) immediately. One strategy is to buy a top-end card now, and then another later when it drops in price because it's no longer the best. But then again, even when you do that, the top-end card tends to be just as good as your SLI configuration on its own in many cases. Hence the problem with SLI/CrossFire. It seems to be only the "best" when you literally spend $1,000 just for two (2) of the very top end video cards.

I mean, one (1) GeForce 7900GS typically bests two (2) GeForce 7600GT cards in SLI (let alone the 7600GS or laughable 7300GT) for less money. And one (1) GeForce 79x0GTO/GTX will typically best two (2) GeForce 7900GS cards in SLI. So I have trouble recommending SLI at all myself. Which means I have difficulty putting in an ATX mainboard instead of a MicroATX, hence my preference for the latter. But that's just myself.

Power, cooling and enclosures

Power is all about delivering current on specific voltage rails. When you don't, because your power supply is inadequate or inefficient, then you get voltage drop, which results in instability. Modern mainboards require ATX 2.0, which has two sets of +12V inputs on its standard 24-pin (not 20-pin) connector, as well as the additional +12V of the 4-pin "P4" connector separate from the "additional 4 pins" on the 24-pin mainboard connector. Your ATX 2.0 power supply should have at least two, independent +12V "rails" -- many, even ones that offer a 24-pin connector -- sometimes only have a single +12V rail. This will be noted with a +12V(1) and +12V(2), each with their own current, possibly as well as the total aggregate offered between them.

Note this is only looking at ATX 2.0, not the EPS12V or EEB SSI standards for servers/workstations (which have various other 6-pin workstation and 8-pin server connectors that are not ATX/PCIe or otherwise compatible power connectors for consumers).

Additionally, you need to consider the following, additional connectors ...

PCI-Express (PCIe), 6-pin, dual +12V for video cards
SATA, 15-pin, +12V, +5V and +3.3V for hard drives

The PCIe slot on the mainboard is supposed to deliver up to 150W of power, far more than the 25W of the AGP slot (and still less than even 25-50W or 50-100W of the lesser known "AGP Pro" slot). Prior to PCIe, many AGP cards used an extra 4-pin Molex connector for additional +12V input. With the advent of PCIe, and the reality that some video cards are pulling 250W+ -- which is over 20A on a +12V rail -- and it's not uncommon to pull more current on a Molex line than the wire gage is rated in some cases when its attached to other devices. The dedicated PCIe connector is designed for this, and you'll need two (2) for SLI/CrossFire.

Even more greatly misunderstood is the 15-pin SATA power connection. Although some SATA drives offer a Molex connector, the 7-pin data + 15-pin power SATA design is a fixed location, single connector attachment (SCA), with staggered pins for power transient. The 15-pin power connector contains three (3) power rails, +3.3V in addition to +5V and +12V. As such, it is best not to use Molex adapters with newer SATA drives as their logic boards may not be regulated to adapt +5V or +12V to +3.3V. Get newer Y-cables that split SATA to SATA itself, including providing the +3.3V that power supplies with SATA connectors do.

Cooling comes next, and it's often a major issue. Bigger heatsinks and more fans doesn't always mean better, just more protruding and louder. Retail CPU fansinks and stock GPU fansinks aren't necessarily bad, and they are warrantied. The bigger issue is the ambient temperature in your case. How much air you can allow in your case, flow over the warmest components and push out of your case is the main issue, as well as the location of components that may or may not be cooled.

Large fans spinning slower can move more air with less noise than smaller fans spinning louder. 120mm at 1000rpm has become the universal ideal, even in smaller MicroATX designs. Dual ball bearing fans are quieter than sleeve fans, and last longer.

The three (3) biggest issues in your case are in order of importance ...

Hard drive
CPU
GPU

Despite more recent marketing, you should never let the ambient temperature around your hard drive exceed 40C (104F). It should be warm to the touch, hot is a bad sign and to singe your finger on mere touch is deadly. Airflow must occur over your hard drives. It doesn't matter if the drive is enterprise rated for "24x7," it will die rather quickly without airflow. Your case design and options for cooling the hard drive bays (unless you relocate them to external 5.25" with a mount option, taking up those slots) is of the utmost concern.

Next is the CPU, which needs to get cool air as well. Intel addressed this in the BTX mainboard design by putting the CPU at the middle-front of the mainboard, and having tower cases blow air from the middle over the CPU first. Ironically, the best cases in the ATX are those that have little more than a side "fan duct" directly over the CPU tower's fan, and then with a 120mm or at least a 92mm exhaust fan out the back. It's effective, doesn't rely on any cooler air from the front of the case (which may have been warmed by hard drives or expansion slots below it in a tower), and just works.

Lastly is the GPU. The GPU is quickly becoming the biggest power gobbler and thermal generator in the system, but the PCIe expansion slot -- by its very nature -- forces GPU packagers and thermal designers to accomodate. As such, it is typically designed to run at much higher temperatures and with less airflow in its far more constrained spaces than your hard drive or CPU. Even just a set of air vents above the expansion area lets more cooler air in. And the hottest GPUs take up two slots, using the headroom to enclose the card and push warm air directly out the back of the second slot.

Without radical enclosures like BTX or the "flipped ATX" design, there's not much we can do about the GPU in a PCIe expansion slot. Although these solutions do lower thermals by as much as 10C. The BTX flips the mainboard orientation so the expansion card's "main IC side" are "facing up" as heat rises. The "Flipped ATX" design also does the same, and can even put the CPU at the lowest part of the case for the ultimate cooling. There are even "Flipped MicroATX" towers.

Furthermore, there is a newfound interest in the "normal standing" desktop or "cube" case, especially for MicroATX. The becoming common 9" x 11" x 14-15" MicroATX "cube" (e.g., Chenming 118 series or the $39 Ultra Microfly) offers some excellent airflow designs. First, they have a 120mm outtake fan just above the CPU area, which is also directly behind the hard drive area (which may have some "side slits" for cooler intake air). Second, they have the power supply right above the card area, and its outtake fan (especially if mounted internally, like some power supplies with large 120mm fans do) can "pull up" warm air directly from the slot area. With two 120mm outtake fans (one in the power supply, another directly above the CPU area), these new MicroATX "cube" designs can effectively cool all components, even though the designs are tight and cramped for their components.

Other variations exist as well.

I have covered both the "Flipped ATX" and "MicroATX cubes" in my earlier blog articles, and the options have increased since them. Enclosures are always a personal taste, but the key is to look for options, and price compare. Even just a cheap ATX enclosure with a 120mm outtake option near the CPU area, the CPU duct/openings and a 80mm intake option around the lower hard drive area is adequate for most users. The Ultra Wizard cases have these options and can be had for free after rebate regularly (provided you add the fans, possibly some felt feet as well).

The lesser known things to know about memory

Memory is probably the most misunderstood aspect of PC assembly. To start, the synchronous timing/signaling used is hardly the performance metric. To continue, virtually all vendors promote violation of JEDEC specifications.

JEDEC banking limits for PC (DDR) and PC2 (DDR2)
Timing is everything
Over-voltage requirements and JEDEC spec violations

First and foremost, know the JEDEC maximum number of DIMMs per channel for PC (DDR) and (DDR2).

DDR   JEDEC Spec  DIMMs    DDR2  JEDEC Spec  DIMMs
----  ----------  -----    ----  ----------  -----
200   PC-1600     3        400   PC2-3200    1
266   PC-2100     2        533   PC2-4200    1
333   PC-2700     2        667   PC2-5300    1
400   PC-3200     1        800   PC2-6400    1

Seeing a repeat theme here? Only 1 DIMM per channel for any DDR2 speed as well as PC-3200 DDR400. On any JEDEC compliant DDR memory controller, using more than 1 PC-3200 (DDR-400) DIMM per channel will result in the signaling slowing down to PC-2700 (DDR-333), which people regularly complain about. These are doubled for "Registered/Buffered" DIMMs, but desktop systems rarely offer them (let alone the newer, "Fully Buffered (FB)" DDR2 DIMMs in newer servers/desktops).

Socket-754 (DDR) is a single channel, direct, 184-pin trace from the CPU, so Socket-754 runs into this limitation directly. Socket-939 (DDR) offers two, 184-pin traces from the CPU, so has limits that are double. Socket-940/AM2 offers two DDR2 channels, so it can only support two (2) DIMMs, period, under JEDEC specification (for stability). Despite marketing, Socket-478 (DDR) runs into single channel issues. LGA-775 is dual channel, so it can only support two (2) DIMMs, period, for JEDEC like Socket-940/AM2.

Timing of the DRAM cells in DRAM ICs on a DRAM DIMM is the biggest performance factor, by far.

The first thing to understand about simple, Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) cells, even those on Synchronous DRAM packages, is that they do not have a clock that runs synchronously with the channel. The MHz signaling does not correspond to the actual cell "latency." That is, a 667MHz (PC2-5300) DDR2 SDRAM module does NOT have 1.5ns (1/666,666,667 of a second) timing. In fact, it doesn't mean it has 3.0ns timing (since two bits are transferred per clock) either.

DRAM cells are typically between 20 to 60ns latency (only 16 to 50MHz -- yes sixteen to fifty). That means it takes several cycles when reading to even get the "first bit of data." Synchronous DRAM attempts to mitigate these great latencies by bursting transfer in pages, typically 4K on x86/x86-64 (what Intel calls IA-32/IA-32e) processors.

Writes are virtually synchronous because they are "send and forget." They will move to the SRAM (static RAM) cache of the processor and/or board, and eventually be sent out to memory. No real latency impact. But reads are devastating if they are not in the SRAM cache already, as the great latency difference between the processor/board and its SRAM and the system DRAM adds great delay. A "cache miss" in modern, superscalar microprocessors and their board interconnects causes an exponential performance hit (of typically over a magnitude).

The SPD chip on each DIMM reports to the channel its various CAS, RAD, RP and RAS timings for the synchronous clock rate. For any DIMM product, you will typically see four (4) timings like 2.5-3-3-6 DDR400/PC-3200 or 5-5-5-15 on DDR2-800/PC2-6400 SDRAM modules (which are pretty good timings). Taking in the synchronous timing, you can figure out the CAS, RAD, RP and RAS of the SDRAM module. If you're intersted more on each definition, see the Wikipedia page (I will not go into them here).

A RAS of 6 on DDR400/PC-3200 means 6 cycles at 200MHz DDR = 6 * 5ns = 30ns (33.3MHz equivalent) maximum delay to access a select row of data in a DRAM IC.

A RAS of 15 on DDR2-800/PC2-6400 means 15 cycles at 400MHz DDR = 15 * 2.5ns = 37.5ns (26.6MHz equivalent) maximum delay to access a select row of data in a DRAM IC.

A RAS of 15 on DDR2-667/PC2-5300 means 15 cycles at 333MHz DDR = 15 * 3ns = 45ns (22.2MHz equivalent) maximum delay to access a select row of data in a DRAM IC.

Yes, latency is not the only factor, as increased, synchronous singling means increased Data Transfer Rate (DTR) -- especially since pages are fetched 4K at a time. But if you're reading more than writing, have a smaller CPU cache (not just L2, but also L1 -- remember, AMD processors have 4x the L1 cache of Intel processors -- long story), etc... latency can have a far greater impact than DTR.

This is why even cheap DDR2 memory can be outperformed by quality DDR, resulting in overall system performance even being 10-20% better. Having directly memory channels on the CPU (e.g., AMD Athlon 64/x2/Opteron), let alone a larger L1 cache (which is completely synchronous with the CPU), can make a huge latency difference as well. This is why AMD did not gain much performance in moving from the DDR Socket-939 platform to the DDR2 Socket-940/AM2 platform.

Over-voltage requirements of DDR2 DIMMs is becoming an increasing issue. It's beyond just many DDR2 DIMMs requiring greater than the JEDEC spec 1.8V -- such as 1.9V, 2.0V, 2.1V or even 2.2V in some cases, to reach the optimal/fastest timing. Many DDR2 DIMMs -- especially higher PC2-6400 (DDR2-800), but even some PC2-5300 (DDR2-667) DIMMs require them to even function at all. So beware when purchasing higher signaling DDR2 DIMMs these days, and verify they will work at the speeds and timings at the stock JEDEC DDR2 1.8V specification. Check the reviews on forums, or even just the negative reviews on reseller sites for feedback with those key discoveries. Over-voltage significantly reduces product life, assuming you even have a mainboard that can offer over-voltage for your DIMMs in the first place.

It's rare, but older DDR DIMMs can require over-voltage as well. Virtually all are stock 2.8V, although newer DIMMs may only require lower voltages of 2.6V (or even 2.1V in a few cases). Putting 2.6V DIMMs in a mainboard that only supports 2.8V is typically not an issue, as over-volting often improves stability (although it can shorten the life of the product), unlike the issues with DDR2 (and its commonly required over-volting). Again, it's far less common with DDR than DDR2, but there are still select products out there.

Storage options, what not to do, and redundancy

The extra frills, and budgetary mistakes

Free/Fake RAID (FRAID) dos, donts and conversions

My Sys Admin Magazine Articles Now On-line

2007-03-25T14:51:00.000-04:00

CMP Media's Sys Admin Magazine, the #1 UNIX and Linux magazine in print circulation, has now made all of my past articles available on-line, and no longer just the ones that were "web features." For easier browsing, I have provided a direct index to any associated figures, listings, sidebars and/or tables for each article.

An index with abstract in reverse chronology ...

2005 September
Dissecting Virtual Tape Libraries (VTLs)

Figure 1: Centralized, real-time tape backup
Figure 2: Centralized, buffered tape backup
Figure 3: Centralized, near-line disk + tape backup
Table 1: Tape and disk media attributes
Sidebar: Near-line enterprise disk

Table 2: Enterprise v. commodity v. near-line disk

For a company that will never have a data loss event, backup is optional. For companies that will experience a data loss event, recovery is not optional. So, invariably, backup of any and all data that may need to be recovered is not optional. Backup strategies are still widely debated, with many beginning to claim tape is a legacy solution that can and should be completely replaced by disk. Keeping recovery clearly in mind, while disk may solve many backup-time issues, disk still has serious environmental, longevity, and portability issues.

2005 February
Licensing Risks, Not Revolutions: Part II

Figure 1: Unmaintainable standards or source results in Hostageware

Part I of this article focused on redefining software licenses beyond the one-dimensional, non-descriptive values of "open" and "closed" (proprietary). It expanded the categorizations, applying the values to axes of "source code" and "standards compliance."

NOTE: These articles were hastily done (per Editor request for copy in these two issues), and my last revision and set of corrections (mainly grammar) were somehow not included by editing.

2005 January
Licensing Risks, Not Revolutions

Figure 1: Standard v. source of values of open and closed

The primary role of IT is to mitigate risk to corporate investments in information. Simple labels on software like "open" or "proprietary" do little to classify risk to an organization's data and IP. In this article, I'll examine these labels and suggest some new ways to define software types.

2004 November
Dissecting PC Server Performance

Servers are all about I/O. Commodity PC servers have rarely offered high-performance I/O, until now. In this article, I'll dissect PC server design and discuss how to evaluate the performance of AMD Opteron solutions.

2004 April
Dissecting ATA RAID Options

Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) is a basic, block transfer interface. In recent ATA specifications (e.g., the UltraDMA modes for parallel ATA or newer Serial ATA), this is little more than a copy of a fixed range of data from primary storage (volatile memory) to secondary storage (non-volatile ATA disk), or vice versa, using direct memory access (DMA). There is minimal system processor involvement in the transfer because the ATA controller arbitrates the DMA transfer on the I/O bus (e.g., PCI) and the integrated device electronics (IDE) of the ATA drive to copy data to and from system memory.

2004 February
Securing Intranets With IPcop

An in-depth defense requires both host and network auditing and detection, in addition to basic host and network perimeter security. Because any security can be defeated, it is essential to be alerted when it has been. There is no greater business liability than an intranet that has become unknowingly compromised.

NOTE: The section on the Snort Intrusion Detection System (IDS) was gutted from the published version.

2002 April
CD Backups with Easy File Access

Listing 1: back2cd.tcsh

Archive (LZ77/PKZip): Source code for 2002 April issue

Sidebar: Compression: lzop vs. gzip or bzip2

Smith introduces the "back2cd" script, which maximizes CD capacity while preserving CD's inherit random-access advantage.

NOTE: Also works for DVD, DVD-DL, etc... as it produces a standard ISO9660 Yellow Book (data) track image file (commonly known as the .iso extension).

Boot Linux, NEVER Windows, after a memory upgrade!

2007-03-19T21:15:00.000-04:00

Stupid me ... I should know better ...

After a memory upgrade on my HP Pavilion dv9000z notebook (see the following, related "review" below) failed to start Linux correctly, I stupidly assumed it could be -- even though this is virtually impossible -- somehow something to do with the Fedora Core 6 x86-64 (specifically Linux kernel 2.6.20 Fedora build 1.2925.fc6) system was booting, configured, etc... So without thinking, I figured I'd just boot Windows to see if I had the same errors and faults, etc...

Stupid me ... I should know better ...

You see, when Linux systems boot, they boot the disk read-only, meaning they do not write to the disk at all -- not until very late into the boot process. And if not everything looks correctly -- let alone if the init (initialization) process or one of its sub-processors or init scripts don't remount the filesystems as read/write (normal usage) -- the disk will not be corrupted.

All Microsoft OSes (including DOS-based like 95/98/Me and NT-based like 2000/XP/Vista), on the other hand, boot read/write from virtually sector #2 (after the master boot record, MBR, on PCs, although NT 5.1/6.0 aka XP-2003/Vista often does a series of reads/writes to hidden sectors in the MBR after sector #1). So what I got was a nice and toasted C: drive as a result of my memory issues.

Thank you Microsoft! No, I should know better, this is on me. And now you know.

Boot Linux never Windows when you upgrade your memory. Your memory may have compatibility issues resulting in corruptions and you do not want blocks from memory flushed to disk when memory is corrupted due to hardware issues! Linux doesn't mount its filesystems read/write until late in the boot process, assuming no issues (much less it doesn't write to "hidden" areas of the disk label aka partition table -- and even MD/LVM avoid doing such until later in the boot process too), and will "crap out" to a prompt with anything still mounted "read-only" if there are any issues.

For those that don't have Linux installed, you can use a Linux "Live CD" (or DVD) like Knoppix (Debian) or other distro (like the new Fedora Live) CD/DVDs.

Luckily ... I backup my C: drive every 2 weeks or so. ;)

You see, it only wiped out my small, 32GB NTFS C: partition. I learned long, long ago (I've been using NT 3.1 since the original Beta in 1992-1993, and OS/2 with HPFS before, as well as after, that) that keeping the C: drive small has saved my bacon so many times. I put everything non-system/non-boot (MS terminology: system=NTLDR bootstrap including any NTBOOTDD.SYS driver, boot=NTKERNEL.EXE and C:\WINNT directory -- yes, the system=boot and boot=system seems opposite, but that's MS' official NT -- system then boot -- terminology for start-up) on the D: drive -- data, programs, even relocate profiles and Documents to D: via registry changes for my user(s) -- everything except system/boot (and that would include driver/hardware programs installed on C: too, because they could be used at boot). I then I keep a dd image (a raw, sector-by-sector, image) of that C: drive on an external FireWire/USB hard drive (on a Linux Ext3 filesystem), which I re-dd about every 2 weeks so I can recover it if NT (including newer 2000/XP) self-toasts.

Related review of PNY 1GB PC2-5300 (DDR2-667) SO-DIMM (CompUSA SKU 340840) ...

First off, PNY's web site's own memory configurator does NOT yet even
offer ANY HP Pavilion 9000 series choices (only through the 8000 series),
neither Intel Core (dv9000t series) nor AMD Turion (dv9000z series).
But stupid me, I didn't check the web site before buying, and figured
anything that says PC2-5300 (aka DDR2-667) must be at least JEDEC
PC2-5300 compliant.

I could NOT get the SO-DIMMs to boot my HP Pavilion dv9000z without
throwing out errors. At first, I thought it might be a memory controller
issue because each 1GB SO-DIMM had 16 ICs, whereas the original 512MB
SO-DIMMs had only 8 ICs per unit. But then not even a single 1GB SO-DIMM
would work correctly on its own (yes, the AMD Socket-S1 does support
single channel use, including on the newer Mobile Sempron / Turion x2
systems). I reseated the SO-DIMMs a half-dozen times to no avail, even
though putting the originals back in a half-dozen times worked
flawlessly each and every time so it wasn't the SO-DIMM sockets.

There's clearly an issue with the IC sizing, bit-width/IC number or
something else and they are possibly not even fully JEDEC PC2-5300
compliant -- not even for a single SO-DIMM on its own. I thought
everything DDR2-667 these days was JEDEC PC2-5300 and there were no
platform-specific issues unlike DDR2-800 (as JEDEC PC2-6400 is far less
standardized), but I guess not!

Again, since PNY's own memory configurator (as of March 2007) doesn't
even offer any HP Pavilion 9000 series in its list, I'd *AVOID* any
PNY PC2 (DDR2) SO-DIMMs for the time being. I wouldn't even try the
2GB kit with 2 pieces for $10 more (SKU 344987)

And yes, the original memory (2x512MB) is back in this very unit, working flawlessly.

PC Gaming Dying at 25, Part I: Why?

2007-03-14T23:58:00.000-04:00

In this multi-part blog, I will explore the state of PC Gaming after a quarter century, including ...

Part I: Why and how is PC gaming dying? (this entry)
Looking back at the various genres ... both dead and alive (and sometimes both)
The future of smaller commercial and community PC gaming development

Part I: Why and how is PC gaming dying?

The reasons for the slow, but stead death of PC gaming -- at least on a major commercial developer scale -- has everything to do with the set-top console. Specifically, in descending order of relevance from most to least significant ...

Hardware entry and development costs v. volume and redesign costs
Software entry and development costs v. volume and support costs
Consumer preferences of "load and forget" and "reduced limitations"

Hardware entry and development costs v. volume and redesign costs

The first "wake up call" to the changing industry should have been IBM's virtual standstill on the Power4-based PowerPC -- especially the common PowerPC 970 sold under the marketing name G5 by Apple. IBM is the world's largest, independent semiconductor foundry -- i.e., a company that helps layout and actually fabricate large volumes of integrated circuits (IC) including maintaining its own, "core" and "peripheral" set of logic chips -- essentially forced Apple to Intel. Before Apple negotiated its new, preferred status with Intel -- replacing Intel's previous favorite, Dell -- IBM did not deliver on its promises of a low-power PowerPC 970, and failed to ramp up clock and performance on the series.

This had little to do with the actual design, capability and scalability of the PowerPC 970, and everything to do with profit. The PowerPC 970 was a brilliant, powerful, scalable and even very low-power (while still being very fast) PowerPC-compatible, 64-bit Power 4 core. But, as always, economies of scale is everything, especially for a large foundry.

For any given PowerPC 970, IBM did design, layout, tape-out and fabrication of a release of the IC for a 12 to maybe 15 or 18 month (in the best case) run. And during that run, they'd sell maybe 1M+ units to Apple for G5 units (G4 products are Motorola) and, to a far lesser extent, various other IBM microelectronics licensees. In the end, this "hardware entry" was quite steep compared to the "volume pay-off," especially considering the limited lifetime of the design before a revision was required. Hence why IBM eventually reached the real conclusion that a mobile G5 was not really worth their bother.

After all, Motorola had let it's PowerPC (G4 and earlier) line essentially die years earlier, leaving Apple with only IBM. Luckily for Apple, unlike Microsoft, their OS codebase was designed for portability (NT 3.1-4.0 not-withstanding on select Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC, of which the Win32 codebase did not port well because it was mutated by MS-DOS 7+Windows 4 aka Windows 95+, hence dropped as of NT 5.0 aka Windows 2000). It was constantly built and tested and even cross-linked against the most commodity platform on the planet, x86. And to that end, Apple found itself using the ICs from the only one of two companies that ship millions of consumer-grade, desktop/server ICs for general usage with a limited 12-18 month revision cycle, Intel.

So what does this all have to do with PC gaming?

IBM is a foundry. Power, not PowerPC, is their "core" offering (and they have even sold exclusive licenses of PowerPC lines to select companies, like the 400 to AMCC). They have countless design capabilities, plenty of "peripheral" support logic options and many other, unique offerings in their combination of "building block" design and fabrication volume. As such, short of select consortiums (like ARM or MIPS), IBM has a huge market swing when it comes to embedded mindshare. So, why does that matter again?

Imagine you are a design and fabrication firm. Would you like to design (and redesign) a product every 12-18 months, and only see 100,000+ units? Or would you like to design a product once for 6 years, with one die-shrink/ cost-reduction redesign mid-lifespan (i.e., 3 years), with 10+ million units shipped over that lifespan. One design, one customer, 100x the volume, over 6 years. Simple microeconomics. And with a solid design in the Power architecture, with a sprawling set of options, it was hard to look beyond IBM, or at least Power itself.

Which is exactly what Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony did. They all use Power cores, Nintendo and Sony with specialized peripherals, and Microsoft with a more mainstream, tri-core design. IBM wasn't always involved with every process in each design, but they are reaping some major royalties in all of their designs -- direct and indirect.

This resulting economies-of-scale "cost swing" is two-fold.

Not only does IBM reach profitability, let alone avoid reoccurring design costs, very early due to volume, but the cost of the IC units themselves go down. They go way in fact, at 100x the volume, meaning the consumer can buy more power for less money -- especially at the console's initial release, when the "equivalent PC power" is far more costly. Most consumers are far more willing to pay $300-500 for something that is "current" for 3-6 years (even if that is only from a marketing aspect), than a PC that is only 1.5-3 years.

The same argument also holds for the Graphics Processor Unit (GPU) and, thus, companies like ATI (now AMD) and nVidia, as much as it does for the CPU with IBM and other, select licensees of Power involved with Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony. Instead of having to rev new PCI-Express (PCIe, or even the lesser known/implemented HyperTransport eXtension, HTX, for AMD) GPUs every 12-18 months for performance, a product can be rev'd for 3-6 years, with only a die shrink and reduced cost mid-life.

In fact, one could argue that this is merely the commodization of the console 15 some years after the same happened for the PC OEM at the start of the '90s. And it's just beginning.

Software entry and development costs v. volume and support costs

But hardware alone isn't the major cost to the gaming software itself. Software development houses have their own realities and resulting issues. But their metrics are little removed from hardware -- entry and development costs v. volume are the staples, with support costs replacing redesign costs.

To start, let's remove the similarities. Most game development is done the same, regardless of the target platform -- PC, console, etc... You have PCs, some mid-range, many high-end, possibly clustered, and with 3D absolute, definitely either rendered or graphics workstation-class for object modeling. Another aspect that is common to any target is post-release support -- i.e., patching -- especially with consoles now being Internet connected. In fact, now that consoles are Internet connected, games don't have to be completely bug-free before release -- something game development houses won't admit used to differ. With the complexity of console gaming (see the following section) rivaling PC games -- and often the same game ships on both, at least when the game/series began on the PC -- development houses can assume users will now download updates on their console as standard procedure, much like they do for PCs.

Now that's where the direct similarities end. More indirect, there are a few, higher initial costs for the console development kits, although depending on the game, it's not uncommon to have matching (or even higher) kit costs for PC targets, although there is clearly an equilibrium forming there too as most PC gaming engines are now available on the console out of sheer market desire. So even the "development kit/licensing" costs are indirectly relative these days. Furthermore, unlike hardware, there is also an indirect similarity in lifetime, as games are only good for 18-36 months on the console before they are "bargain bin" much like the more popular PC games as well. So no major difference there.

Which brings us back to the two major differentiators, volume and support costs.

A console title often sells in the hundreds of thousands, even for a lesser title, and millions are not uncommon for the top few dozen games on a console, even still holding some value some 2-3 years after release. PC games, on the other hand, are awarded "Game of the Year" titles when they cross hundreds of thousands of sales, and only where games are clearly not favored on consoles (which is becoming less and less of a difference these days), millions is very rare. In fact, a good testament to a best selling PC game that people assume only could be on a PC is when a console port is still made later, and still somehow sells well enough to make the port profitable (although not always).

But even volume alone is not the major issue for game development houses. Volume combined with support costs are.

Support costs are measured beyond just direct user support, which is virtually non-existent today. Commercial software support is abysmal even in the commercial/business application world where you sell at 10x the price and fee-per-incident or support contracts are considered "added cost." So when it comes to games, virtually no software development houses offer much other than forums or other places where users can help themselves, along with the occasional support moderator. No, the support costs are at every aspect of the game's history -- from development and release target to supporting the various iterations and variations of hardware in the PC platform. Add one part predicting the future with one part combinational probability and you've got a really, really unsolvable problem.

It starts in development by trying to predict the PC that will exist to run a title some 1-2 years before release. While some would say that's easier to do for a PC than a console, since a console is fixed and a PC can be upgraded, it's still the key issue for those "top 10 titles" that will sell hundreds of thousands or even break a million copies. Those titles will target the PC consumers will have at the mid-to-higher end (those willing to pay for the hardware and your software) and they will expect it to be at least usable for that generation at actual release, in addition to "look even better" when they upgrade in 18+ months. In reality, this double-set of requirement is much, much more difficult than targeting a "known quantity" of a fixed console platform, even when the platform is just specs some 18 months before it's actually available. It's still much easier from the standpoint of a title's development as it exits initial design and enters actual coding.

The support issue is then compounded by the myriad of PC configurations -- beyond just the CPU and GPU, but the countless factors, as well as the "general use" of the PC that tends to bring in spyware and various other, unexplained and unquantified factors. Yes, consoles and other embedded systems are not immune to such issues either, especially now that they are Internet-connected. But it's much, much easier to bring a console -- or any other embedded system for that matter -- back to a "known state," especially when the hardware is the exact same across millions of units. In contrast, a PC may be unique down to thousands or even hundreds of units in just end hardware configuration -- especially when it comes to targeting those "higher-end" consumers.

No, the major game development houses don't want to deal with a PC if they don't have to. Sure, there are many, many "name brand" PC gaming genres and series that are still selling, and will still sell, on the PC in the future. But these are clearly becoming the mainstay of only those established, well-known and return customer PC gaming genres and their select series (or even those newer titles that clearly rip off ideas from those series). More and more newer gamers are console gamers -- 90% according to many studies, as well as the fact that consoles are now outstriping PC sales in general (and not merely just PC gaming rigs) in the past year.

The reason? The "support" issue is more than just a developer problem ...

Consumer preferences of "load and forget" and "reduced limitations"

The greatest, most well-known -- to the general consumer -- system that runs the allegedly "hard-to-use OS" known as Linux is the common Digital Video Recorder (DVR), even more commonly referred by its most popular brand name, "TiVo." Virtually all major DVR solutions today run Linux, as do countless other embedded devices. Despite other attempts, Microsoft's Media Edition Windows OSes have utterly failed to "catch on" other than being "just another edition" of their general purpose OS (as well as direct, Linux-based open source toolkits other than for fringe, technical users like myself), because 90%+ of consumers just don't want to deal with a PC.

One basic hardware configuration. One "known quantity" software installation. No need to have a technically proficient kid, neighbor's kid or at least yourself to deal with it when it becomes unusable. Consoles, like set-top boxes, are what 90%+ of consumers want. "Load and forget."

It used to be that consumers had to accept select limitations with consoles over PCs. No 3D, typical side-scroller or other, simple gaming titles, countless other limitations including -- the biggy -- lack of resolution. Ugly, 640x480 interlaced -- one 640x240 frame one 1/60th of a second, another 640x240 frame another 1/60th of a second -- equivalent to a sight-disrupting 30 frames per second (fps). Even if the television was capable of providing 480p (progressive, 60fps) for a 480i input signal -- i.e., the game is still rendered interlaced, but the TV display avoids the eye-strain -- it's still not the same.

But that's no longer the case anymore.

I've already talked about the fact that sheer volume is now giving consoles the ultimate "price-for-performance" advantage at least at console release, if not even a year later, versus PCs. A consumer can also get a powerful gaming console for half (or even one-third) the price of a PC at release, especially since the vendor is selling below cost and will recoup later as hardware costs come down (or just via software, if they never do on hardware).

But the other flip of the coin, now in 2006+, is the fact that 720p -- that's 1280 x 720 resolution of progressive scan or (close to) 60fps -- is affordable. As such, most Americans, Europeans, Japanese, Chinese, etc... consumers who game, would buy a higher-end PC for gaming, etc... are putting in HDTV, commonly 720p or close, and have the capability for high-definition now. And with even yesterday's (i.e., 2005) ATI R400 and nVidia NV40 series GPUs, standard full screen anti-aliasing (FSAA) and other effects (such as shading) really makes higher resolutions less of a desire. That's not to say you won't have a significant number of gamers jump to 1080p (1920 x 1080 progressive), or even just 1080i (1920x1080 interlaced, 30fps), but 90%+ of consumers will see little difference, or at least not see the difference to pay for it for now.

720p gaming is what people can get for under-$500 in a console, and another sub-$500 in a 27", sometimes even 32" after rebate, LCD TV that also seconds as their main viewing device. In fact, with so many gamers either being singles, couples without children or children with their own "second TV" from the parents (not that I believe it is so wise), this sub-$1,000 configuration is quickly becoming "standard issue" more than PCs in homes. Indeed, one could argue that the console's quick volume increase in 2006+ has much to do with the fact that HDTV has become affordable, all while the PC need be little more than $400 for e-mail and web surfing, and no longer gaming.

Let alone do the games need to be taking up disk space and possibly "mucking up" the PC -- daddy's (or mommy's) PC for that matter, especially when you want to keep your teenagers off of it. Heck, even I -- an absolute Linux user for the past decade -- don't want to reboot into Windows just to game. When I can't find a title for Linux (which is actually the best platform for gaming, especially when you use the PC for work -- e.g., you don't have to be "root" to run a game, among other security advantages), I'd rather just have a console -- regardless of the underlying OS (even Windows-based) -- if it keeps me from having to deal with Windows on any PC because of the support issues (and not out of any dislike or political-based distain of anything Microsoft).

Enough pro-console? What do I think PC games offer? Does it matter?

After reading all this, you might think I'm pro-console, you just have a hard time accepting much of what I say is reality or you really differ with me because of some points you think I didn't cover. Trust me, I don't like it any more than you do, and I do think there are a few points left in the PC game industry that will keep it running (as I'll cover in the last part of this series). But that doesn't escape the reality that ...

Most major, commercial game companies don't care about us anymore, becauase we're not volume.

Of course, there will always be select houses with select games that cater to us. The big one is any game that requires the precision of a mouse. As much as Halo might have made first person shooters "playable" on a gamepad, it still sucks in my book (yes, I've played and finished it too) compared to the first person shooters we've all been accustomed to playing with a mouse on the PC. And that would include games you could enter and leave vehicles and what-not, PC games that pre-date Halo on the Xbox. I would argue it's popularity is really the result of people who never experienced PC gaming, and grew up with consoles.

With that said, Microsoft basically guaranteed that PC gaming would continue with select, major development houses for select, major product titles/series/genres for at least a short while longer -- purposely perhaps? (given PC gaming is a staple of the Windows OS versus other options, and not because of capability differences, but existing consumer volume) -- since their #1 mistake with the Xbox 360 (other than not offering digital video output options, only digital audio), was not offering a mouse input option. The only 3rd party options available poorly implement emulation for mouse input. And if you think that's bad, it gets worse for us old PC gamers ... consoles are purposely crippling games even on the PC!

One of my favorite games available for both the Xbox and PC (and I own both) was Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. In Morrowind -- first/third-person Role Playing Game (RPG) -- where you strike someone with an arrow, a sword slash, etc... made a difference in how they were wounded, possibly fatally (especially when instantly). Showing the clear bias towards console players, and removing the expectations of the typical PC player, this was regressed out of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, crippling "any hit makes the same difference." This basically reversed the entire evolution of first person shooters in the PC world -- localizing damage -- and it's not the sole example. But as I said before ...

Most major, commercial game companies don't care about us anymore, becauase we're not volume.

Just look at the popularity of Halo. 90%+ of console gamers -- which means 90%+ of gaming consumers -- don't care because they don't know. They aren't familiar with the Quake and latter engines that actually localized damaged and all those other small, subtle, but "world of difference" changes in almost 15 years of evolution in of the first-person shooter. That lesson is utterly lost, as 90%+ of console gamers -- now the majority far over PC gamers -- don't care, so, again ...

The major, commercial game houses don't care about PC gamers.

This is the reality people. I don't know if Microsoft's leaving the mouse out of their console was intention or not (because of their ties to the PC gaming platform with Windows). But since 90%+ of consumers don't care, and are willing to "play like Halo" essentially "forced them" to -- all without their knowing, and largely because of it -- it really didn't matter if they did. And, sadly enough, I have a Xbox 360 and even I have to agree that I don't miss the mouse for what I do play on the console (which is not first person shooters, of course, that's why I still have a PC).

What about Flight Sims and Space Sims and other things? Oh, perfect examples of why PC gaming is very much dying at age 25, as I will explore in the coming parts. Perfect examples they are, even though some of you reading this are just like me -- you "grew up" on the PC with flight sims and space sims and you loved games like the Jane's series to Wing Commander and latter incarnations like LO-MAC or iL-2 or Freespace and the X series. -- we're old dogs, and our genres' followings are not in those 90%. I.e. ... (my now broken record) ...

The major, commercial game houses don't care about PC gamers, especially our clearly PC-only genres with their "advantages."

Remember this reality as I revisit the history of PC gaming and its various genres in the blog posts to be continued here shortly ... ;-)

Additional thanx to Brian Ashe for feedback.

Who writes Linux? Been obvious to me all along ...

2007-03-11T21:42:00.000-04:00

Who writes Linux?

That's a broad question that is extremely difficult to quantify or even qualify. But a Linux Weekly News article by corbet tries to quantify the contributions -- from many different metrics and angles -- who works actively on the kernel.

Ironically enough, even though IBM maintains almost entire platform ports and architectures on Linux, along with Freescale, Intel and select others -- and that accounts for anywhere from 2-10% in various metrics -- it's not the #1 maintainer in any major metric. It's easy to get a lot of lines of code, patchsets, etc... when you maintain the hardware for your platform. Even HP gets far less credit for this, or it comes bundled with Intel contributions.

In fact, the overwhelming contributor in virtually all metrics -- excluding unknown (which is significant in several metrics) -- is the same company I've been trying to educate people about for years. They have no other interest but Linux and Linux alone. They have no other products. They have no proprietary solutions at all. They sell a 100% GPL-centric product line, giving away everything to all its competitors, hording not product line (let alone its code) from any other competitor (let alone the community).

I have said this over the last 10 years, and a majority of Linux advocates (especially newer) have just looked at me like I'm dumb -- along with the other, brave few that joined me -- because such an overwhelming majority couldn't be wrong in their eyes. The self-fulling prophecy. Sigh, even now people are saying this is a flawed and inaccurate set of metrics because of the results.

The only bias in this article is that it is biased towards vendors who produce their own hardware, and need to donate that knowledge to the kernel in the form of code so it is well supported. Take the 390 and other ports out and you'd see IBM's share drop tremendously. Same deal why you see vendors like Freescale and Intel, although one could argue in these latter two cases that most of their contributions are affect products others than their own.

The list is dominated by the various, anonymous contributors, select organizations and institutions and the -- at the top -- the one, sole commercial entity that does not sell one single, proprietary product. Makes you think about who is really and truly about 100% Linux, and those entities who have other interests than just Linux. That's not to demonize these other companies at all, and I'm happy to see their involvement. In fact, it's a testament to their wish to involve the community with the support of their products, because they realize the value of the community.

But it is something to keep in mind the next time you want to rant about Red Hat. Especially since Red Hat doesn't have a piece of hardware they only sell or design, or a select subsystem or component that they alone are the only one that uses (even if some would argue otherwise).

People have complained for years that Red Hat's "influence" has changed the path of Linux -- from the readoption of GLibC 2 in Red Hat Linux 5 to the push to GCC 3 in Red Hat Linux 7 / Enterprise Linux 2 to the implementation of Native POSIX Threaded Libraries (NPTL) in Red Hat Linux 9 / Enterprise Linux 3 to SELinux Mandatory Access Controls / Role Based Access Controls (MAC/RBAC) in Fedora Core 3 / Enterprise Linux 4. Now you know how Red Hat is able to "influence" Linux, especially the kernel.

Just like the sign at the animal shelter that reads ...
"If you don't like what you see here ... Volunteer!"

True community involvement, by individual choice, in a free-market, capitalist society -- the ideal form of "public good," instead of forcing everyone which quick becomes differing views of "what is right." But what do I know? I mean, the majority of Linux advocates know far more than me, they've been telling me, among other Linux developers and consultants, that we're just wrong. After all, Red Hat is the Microsoft of Linux -- although now more and more think Novell is just as evil too, possibly more so.

Even I, a man who has built 90% of his career over the last 10 years on Linux solutions with Red Hat, don't have anything negative to say about Ubuntu, KDE, etc... (not at all), unlike the seemingly majority of "advocates" who blast each other back and forth with commercial-like marketing sewage. In fact, leadership in the Linux community (note, I didn't say "leader" or even "leaders") isn't about saying anything negative about your competitors, or even preventing them from integrating with your solutions. That's something we -- the Linux community as a whole (putting many advocates aside) -- left the commercial software world for, so why would we drag it here?

I thank God everyday that Linux is a meritocracy and not a Democracy. Funny, the Fedora Project tends to have the same organization too, and not everyone gets a vote. And they get things done, not always as everyone wants them, but in the way that moves Linux forward. Because while you can't make everyone happy, many of us who have been implementing Linux as an enterprise solution (not just for web services) for the past decade are getting what our clients say they need.

If you disagree, remember, Linux can use volunteers just as much as the animal shelter. That's how things get done, and how you get your "influence."

Related Blog Entry:
The Five Types of 'Linux' Corporations

"Common Sense" Disaster Recovery Fundamentals

2007-03-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

Most people in IT get away with not having a disaster recovery plan every year. Why? Because they don't have a disaster. For those that do, they have ensured over 2/3rds of their employers do not recover. Don't be a statistic -- or rather -- don't let your employer be a statistic.

There are basic fundamentals to disaster recovery. They are:
1. The 3 basic levels of data redundancy
2. The time crunch, especially recovery time
3. Test restores are an ongoing duty

I've heard arguments of budget, simplicity and countless other reasons why various IT support departments fail to have a disaster recovery. I've also seen many, many false disaster recovery setups. They all make my shake my head. Especially when disaster recovery can be very inexpensive (and in free) in most cases.

1. The 3 basic levels of data redundancy

There are 3 basic levels of data redundancy:
A. On-line: immediate recovery of data on the system itself
B. Near-line: near-immediate recovery from another system on the network
C. Off-line: disaster recovery when you don't have the system, let alone the network

On-line includes more than redundant power and disk, which merely saves you time (and money, which is a good reason to pay an extra $100 for a 2nd disk in even desktop systems these days) and avoids downtime. Today servers should use filesystem snapshots so accidentally deleted files can be recovered by users without bothering system administrators. It's worth the time and effort to implement filesystem snapshots on servers, or even the free VMWare Server product to run servers as guest OSes and do snapshots of the entire system (which is great for backups too). There are countless options here to help you, and you don't need to buy a NetApp hardware solution to get them.

Near-line means disk on the network, recoverable within a short period of time, let alone provides you a way to backup quickly in the first place. This could be as simple as a server that receives rsync updates from systems every night (ideal this is also your off-line backup server, as it can put data to tape or ruggedized 24x7, and not merely just during the backup window), rotating backup sets or maybe using filesystem snapshots to do the same. Near-line systems can be as simple as an extra $500 PC on the network with two very large disks in a RAID-1 configuration. Again, there are countless options here to help you, and you don't have to go out and buy a full-up Virtual Tape Library (VTL) product (of which my article, in the previous link, dissects and isn't really much different than what you can do on your own) to get them.

Off-line can mean a combination of things, but it usually means tape or ruggedized disk, and it means only periodically. When you have a near-line system, you only need to off-line every week or two for off-site disaster recovery -- that's it! As such, off-line does not mean a 3.5" disk in a hot-swap bay or an USB or IEEE1394 FireWire connection. 3.5" disk is not meant to be thrown around. Consider at least a 2.5" disk -- which takes 20-50x the shock -- and is as low as $0.75/GB today (160GB for $120), which is being even being used more and more in an "enclosed cartridge" by various vendors. There are even hot-swap SATA bays now that fit four (4) 2.5" drives in a 5.25" bay. Of course, if you're putting TBs of data off-line, just invest $500 into an LTO-1 (or later) tape drive which will quickly pay for itself, as well as has an extensive upgrade path through multi-TB cartridges. In either case, these "off-line" options always go in your "near-line" server, not your main servers up 24x7, so if they cause an issue (e.g., when removing 2.5" disks), no one is down!

If you're not seeing a repeat theme here -- near-line disk and off-line ruggedized disk or tape complement each other, but you need both near-line and off-line. You want to keep near-line disk so you can easily backup/restore your actual systems within the backup window and off-line media so you can restore after a disaster. People dismiss tape because they incorrectly implement tape -- you should never backup directly to tape from end-systems, but use a near-line system to directly backup near-line to disk during your backup window, and then off-line to tape from that near-line system at your leisure. That solves the alleged "tape problem," which isn't a "tape problem" but people not removing the disadvantages of tape (linear access) leaving only the advantages (cartridge life, portability, etc...) over 3.5" disk.

If you can't afford tape or don't have enough data to justify it's cost then get some 2.5" drives, which are designed for the torture of being moved around in laptops. Don't look to external 3.5" drives, especially not via USB or FireWire, as they are often not designed for hot-plugging with servers (despite marketing to the contrary), and can bring down your servers (especially overnight when there is a "bus disconnect"). Use 3.5" drives as they were designed, as fixed disks, in a near-line server as above. This is much better of a solution -- often costing less than $500 with a PC and two (2) redundant disks -- than a few external drives that aren't redundant and not as fast over the external buses either.

As countless people have thanked me (among others who put forth the same), recognizing near-line is the answer for nearly all restores -- because companies typically don't have a disaster event -- is why you don't need (let alone want) to use removable disk for off-line. You only need off-line for that disaster chance, so you only need to off-line every 2 or so weeks. Use commodity 3.5" disk in its natural, fixed configuration on the network as your staple, near-line solution, and then complement that with infrequent off-line to either tape or ruggedized disk from that near-line server which can go up and down, unlike your main servers (which you don't want to be hot plugging things on).

2. The time crunch, especially recovery time

Time is money. The time crunch after any disaster -- whether it's a single, server melt-down or the destruction of a full office -- is money down the drain tied linearly to the duration of the downtime. Consider the following concepts:
A. Consistency/Reproducibility
B. Boot to Restore
C. Network Reconfiguration

Consistency and reproducibility are the staples of configuration management in any environment. "One-off" systems can be a real PITA for configuration management, especially in enterprises of multiple servers. When you go to install any capability, try to do as many systems at the same time in the same configuration -- and consider buying 1 extra system for immediate replacement or spare parts -- especially if the systems will in use for more than 2 years as older parts will be no longer available. And at least make it so you can install the next system the exact same way as you did earlier -- be it cloning (often required for Windows), or formal/proper package management (easily to do with modern Linux distros), etc... And another option today, which is free, is to always install your servers as guest OSes in VMWare -- which can be moved to any system running VMWare Player/Server -- ala "reinstall" in 15 minutes.

Put these images on bootable DVDs and make several, extra copies to go with both your near-line systems and off-line media. That way you're ready to bring any type of system back-to-life when you need it. Again, the more you standardize your installs, the easier it is to consistently reproduce them.

Boot to restore time is yet another reality. The longer you can't bring a server back to life, the more users are down and it costs your company. Your bootable DVDs with your system images should have a way to reinstall those images. It's worth paying for 1 license of a professional Windows recovery system for each Windows server. And with Linux, you should know how to recover any Linux system from a "rescue" or other CD, and merging that boot with the images is the best thing you can do. And, again, if you really don't want to deal with much, just having the images as VMWare guest makes it cake, as you completely separate the hardware aspects from the OS run-time, and any VMWare Player or Server will get you back and running.

In all cases, again, your system images are useless or a major PITA if you don't have a way to boot them and get them back on the system -- especially when it might not be the original hardware.

Network reconfiguration is the last aspect people overlook. I don't know how many times I've seen a router or switch fail, and no one backed up the firmware. To make things worse, you need to have not mere network topology documentation, but an extensive document listing all the services required on your network -- especially when a major disaster takes down your office. Your desktops and servers could be ready, but select network devices or networking services could be the massive "reverse engineering effort" that keeps them from running.

Especially since sysadmins have a nasty habit of looking at networking separate, possibly even outsourcing support. Make sure you get that vital, reconfiguration information from your ISP, network support, etc..., and put copies on your restore DVDs.

3. Test restores are an ongoing duty

Lastly, and definitely not least, test restores are not optional. Specifically:
A. On-line: Check options daily
B. Near-line: Daily logs, check restore before you off-line
C. Off-line: As you off-line, as well as when you rotate, from near-line

On-line restores, such as filesystem snapshots, will pretty much be checked by your users. That's the power of filesystem snapshots and letting your users help themselves, your users will let you know if they don't work. And if you are using VMWare or other virtualization snapshots, every now and then test your VMWare snapshot from the previous day on a spare system (if you have one -- you should if you have at least 3 servers), separate from the network.

Near-line restores will also be fairly natural. Check your logs daily to see what nightly pulls from systems didn't complete. Otherwise you really only need to check one other time, when you off-line. Because if and when you are going to put to off-line tape or ruggedized disk, you might want to check that the backup was complete before you do. This is also where you want to make use of that spare server, or at least some spare PC.

Off-line is really the only time anything is a PITA. You at least want to use "write after verify" to your tape or ruggized disk. People who incorrectly backup directly to tape, instead of using a near-line disk solution, often turn this off because it won't finish in their backup window. Just more reason to get a near-line solution, because you can off-line data for off-site storage at any time, from any recent backup that's on your near-line server! That's why near-line is your staple backup/restore solution, especially when complementing off-line!

Furthermore, you need to periodically check your previous off-line backups. I normally recommend 2 off-line check a month, or at least 1 per month, and it's normally a real pain. People loathe this, but that's where near-line comes to the rescue yet again. Instead of restoring to the original server, which most people do when they don't have separate near-line -- only directly to off-line (or, worse yet, a removable/portable disk right on the server), you can directly compare the off-line media to the near-line server's storage. You can even restore to the near-line server, not bothering your main servers. And you could even store file lists and checksums of your off-line backups on your near-line server, which gives you a quick "sanity check" if a prior off-line has gone bad or not.

Conclusions

This article is about "common sense." When people start talking about proper backup, they think big bucks or big efforts. No, that's so far from the truth it's not even funny. The "common sense" is all in the restoration. And it's often very cheap to do (even for small businesses) and saves sysadmins countless hours compared to the common (and poor) procedures in place.

For the most part this is realizing a near-line backup server is the key. It gives you the fastest 3.5" disk performance available, in their natural, fixed, "on" (not stored) environment, right on your network, ready to use. You don't need every backup to be removed from your office, especially since that's only an issue if and when you have a disaster.

From there you only need to do an off-line backup ever 2 weeks or so, and most companies only retain data for longer-term store on a monthly basis. That's where the near-line backup server is ideal again -- because it has backups of all your systems you can then put to off-line media (tape or ruggedized disk) at your leisure, and not under the constraints of the backup window. It also gives you a system to test restores from older, off-line backup media too, without bothering the servers.

The Open Source Solution Providers' Mission Statement

2007-02-05T23:49:00.000-05:00

Before getting sidetracked in late January with what I will only term as "unfinished business," I really had a "breakthrough" in what I was finally rationalizing in my self-searching. Now before this seems like a Jerry McGuire moment or something (yeah, even I had to think twice when I said "breakthrough" the first time in my mind), I don't hate my place in life. In fact, I'm starting to finally realize what I've been saying for years, openly, and commonly being misunderstood. And it literally is a Mission Statement.

An Open Source Solution Provider ...

Has a reputation is built on what they do, not what they say they do
Shall never make any claim to the contrary, even if it takes years to build that reputation with each and every client or other professional they serve
Shall never claim they are or market themselves as anything, except what they actually build as peer professionals

They should not and do not claim credentials, that they are focused on only solving technical problems, that they are people of a various cliches (e.g., "we have the most experienced professionals" or "our professionals have a high signal to noise ratio"), etc... They are who they are by doing, not saying.

That has always been my essence, especially with my clients and other peer-professionals, and why those who know me for years trust my advise, judgement and even company.

Is not interested in rules or policy
Ethics and law should always drive every consideration
The only other rule is the Golden Rule
Everything else breaks eventually down into posture, argument and rhetoric, and they refuse to use that against any other peer professional or any of their clients

How they act anywhere and towards anyone or any entity is how they will act towards their clients. So a professional who has the same standing and approach in how they act towards the aforementioned is how they can be ultimately considered to act towards their clients.

I have found it extremely difficult to deal with other "professionals" who claim to be of "good standing" when they cross many basic, ethical standards and, in some cases, law. They are often the ones who shape rules and policies against their own clients, as well as other professionals in joint endeavors.

Open Source was never the best solution merely because "brand X" was the problem or allegedly "worse"
Open Source should always be the best solution based entirely on its own merits under the same scrutiny as other solutions, and not merely the "lesser of two evils"
Only compare and consider solutions that truly differ on a technical level, not marketing one (e.g., common software redistributions of merely the same software repackaged)
Leave most of the "marketing" aspects of "repackaged" commercial software for a reason, and they are not interested in dragging them into the Open Source world

Linux projects don't fail, Linux professionals fail their projects, they fail their clients, they fail themselves. This is not limited merely to Linux, but any solution however it is boasted as better, faster or whatever else marketing term is the pitch of the day. Open Source in no different than in any other product, and while there is less marketing and vendor-centric influences in the Open Source space, they still exist. In fact, Open Source professionals must be vigilant to avoid generating the marketing and FUD themselves, especially when it comes to differing over software that is -- in essence -- virtually the same.

I have found FUD to be, quite often, completely unintentional and built on what may be considered "common knowledge" to non-professionals. This is why I strongly believe Open Source professionals should not even acknowledge such, including myself from this point forward.

Do not take stands on anything, except that they serve their client's interests first and foremost
Never compromise that basic promise with any client or any entity, even when not compensated
Do not promote or boycott anything
Further recognize that many promotions or boycotts are often misguided, leading to harm being done to various entities, including people losing jobs over nothing but hearsay or rhetoric
Always consider what any "hate" does, let alone how any "hate" of any entity, product or project ends up representing themselves

Open Source professionals may scrutinize technically and distinctly (let alone equally), but they should be above the common rhetoric or "anti-" approach, especially in general. Using select corporate, project or other names in an attempt to excuse what is, in fact, really a base form of "hate" is not acceptable, no matter what harm may have been allegedly done by the entity under "hate." No Open Source solution was ever sold -- long-term -- on its "demonization" of any other entity, but only on the technical merits of its ability to "do the job."

I cannot stress this enough. Open Source professionals are not advocates, except when it comes to the interests of their clients. But not ironically, in the end, such Open Source professionals tend to be the light of any advocacy, because of what they do, not what they say or ... "preach." That is how I have lived my career, and from now on, it is what I will certainly put forth and point out as I go forward.

Where do I go from here? I look back five (5) years ...

In early 2002 I registered osspa.com for the Open Source Solution Providers' Alliance (OSSPA), a site I had hoped to build as a peer collection point for like-minded, consulting Open Source professionals like myself. Almost five (5) years later, it's time I put that idea forth. Even if it ends up being little more than my original thought as a job resource site and possible NNTP/HTTP knowledge base (that would eventually feed a series of books), it would still serve the purpose I wanted to build almost five years ago, which would be a productive venture.

Entry removed ...

2007-01-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of being productive, moving past my initial, largely "too open," soul-searching, I have removed this post and posted a new Mission Statement for myself going forward.

The Open Source Solution Providers' Mission Statement

Huaer 608 Batteries: 8+ hours at 36000'

2007-01-16T20:02:00.000-05:00

I recently opted for a 17" "Desktop Replacement" Notebook computer. More video options, two hard drive bays and higher capacity batteries were of interest.

Where are the Higher Capacity Batteries?

I originally wanted a Dell 17" with 1920x1200 and a GeForce Go 7900 series, but they wanted way too much money -- typically over $2,000 before warranty (even after eBay coupons, since many deeper discounts have never been applicable on the higher-end models which already have good discounts). And because of our strong consumer laws, Dell does not offer it's "Accidental Damage/Coverage" plan in Florida, which really kills any benefits of buying a Dell. The non-consumer/non-small business replacement plans for businesses, which are open to Florida, are far, far more expensive, and even HP is cheaper (if you can get a good discount on HP).

So I waited and waited and I finally opted for an HP 17" (dv9000 series) with an upgraded 1680x1050 display and the GeForce Go 7600 series when they had a deep discount at OfficeDepot.COM. I actually wanted a HP Pavilion dv9000t with the Intel Core 2 Duo, but with almost $400 in rebates (and a good $600 cheaper than the best dv9000t at the time), a fully loaded HP Pavilion dv9000z Turion TL-50 (I should have gone for the TL-52 with 2x the cache for $25 more -- doh!) was hard to resist at $800 after rebates HP+OfficeDepot.COM rebates (of which, I've gotten all but $25, which I just got notice of 2 weeks ago -- HP is always fast, OfficeDepot.COM is damn too slow). At $800, I considered it almost disposable after 1 year anyway, so I didn't opt for the extended warranties beyond 1 year (which start at $99 and $199 for 2 and 3-year "no frills" and at $249 and $399 -- half the price of the notebook! -- for 2 and 3-year accidental coverage).

I figured I could find an after-market battery for less, so I just took the standard 14.4V @ 4400mAh (63Wh). In actuality, I can't even find any higher capacity battery for the 9000 series right now, and the 63Wh units are hard to find for anything less than their $160 list. UPDATE: NewEgg.COM finally has them for under $120 now, but I still can't find anything but the 63Wh units for the 9000 series.

150+ Minutes Battery ... Until I Flip on the 3D (Ouch!)

Overall I'm more than satisfied with the basic 63Wh (14.4V, 4400mAh) battery in the 9000 series during nominal 2D operation of the Turion x2, at even DVD playback, giving me a solid 150+ minutes (2.5+ hours). I can often get even 180+ minutes (3+ hours) with standard, non-constant usage (display off, suspend, etc... anything short of hibernation). And from the commonly A/C-provided DC input (19V @ 4.74A = 90W), the GeForce Go 7600 might not be a Go 7900, but it does get within 40-50% of its performance for a lot less juice. Unfortunately, it might as well be the same power pig as the 7900 when running on battery!

Because when I fire up the Go 7600 (G73 GPU) on battery, even with the reduced power usage at the expense of performance, I'm lucky to get 75+ minutes with Linux's Power over Performance setting, and virtually sub-60 minutes under Windows. The combination of coming out of hibernation for boot and going back into hibernation when the battery is low will result in little more than 60 minutes "actual playing time." Not good for switching 63Wh batteries. Not good at all, but not unexpected by me either. I had an original Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 (released spring of 2001) with the original nVidia Go Mobile (NV11 GPU -- GeForce2 MX equivalent) that sucked up the juice 2-2.5x as fast too (back when NiCD was common, and my original battery didn't last me a year!).

Since I can't seem to find an extended battery (8000mAh?), I considered getting a second, standard (14.4V@4400mAh, 63Wh) battery. Of course, having to rehibernate and unhibernate is, again, a pain and takes down the battery a good 10-20% with the constant disk usage for those few minutes (more like 10-20 in "battery time"). I figured I should look elsewhere for additions options, and so I looked external. Especially since most external batteries have an "off switch" to prevent constant use/drainage (such as by internal Lithium regulatory logic).

Looking at External Options

First off, I didn't want to dork with anything that couldn't output 19V, even though the battery is 14.4V. A number of sites say that all you need is what your internal battery provides as DC, not necessarily what your A/C adapter provides as DC output. Although I consider myself far from a practical electrical technologist (being a theory-heavy EE, and even then I've done too much digital), that sounded like someone applying the 1.2->1.5V store/operating potential in the wrong direction, and a recipe for issues. So off-the-bat, I went looking something that would provide 19V output to the dv9000z's 19V input as if it was a "full 19V DC" from the A/C adapter.

Secondly, I refreshed myself on newer battery technologies. I know most notebooks use Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) rechargeable batteries, as do most portables that require at least 7.2V (hence why you don't see rechargeable Li-Ion used in AA form-factors, where either NiCD/NiMH rechargable or non-rechargeable Lithium are 1.2/1.5V in 2000-2500mAh AA or 700-900mAh AAA). I don't like the idea of Li-Ion, especially after the recent Sony battery issues (of which my HP has one, although there is no recall because HP-Sony believe their designs are different). In fact, when using any external battery with my notebook -- given current FAA recommendations on not using any input that may charge a Li-Ion battery (the most likely case where it will explode) -- I was not going to leave my internal Li-Ion battery in it. And 7.2V fuel-cell isn't here yet either, let alone it's no safer and even more questionable *although companies like UltraCell are getting FAA approval for some products).

Third, if I figured I was going to get an external battery, I wanted to find something flexible in output, possibly with multiple. Most of the notebooks I buy have 19V DC output A/C adapters, although 14-16V would be nice too. Many other, external devices are often 12V, such as external hard drives and DVD players. And even if it only had an additional, 5V option, that would be nice for recharging many small or hand-held devices, like my Treo phone. USB-provided +5V would be even better, although there are many, generic +5V power cable adapters to USB too.

Huaer 608 Series: +5V, +12V and +16V or +19V options

After extensive research, I finally decided on a relatively new option. After much investigation, I found that Huaer Electronics Limited, based on out of Hong Kong -- yes, Chinese, not Japanese -- had the best solution I had seen yet. Although they are relatively new (founded in the late '90s), in the wake of Sony's battery fiasco, Huaer had been aggressively marketing various distributors with its replacement batteries for Dell, Gateway, Toshiba and the handful of other OEMs with recalls. After all, even many of Sony's batteries are now fabbed in China as well, as brand name means squat these days.

The Huaer 608 series, also distributed by Ovone (among other OEMs), offers three (3) key outputs:

"Primary" V @ up to 6A -- "Primary" voltage varies by model
+12V @ up to 2A -- perfect for most DVD players or external hard drives)
USB +5V @ up to 1A -- usable for countless, small/hand-held devices)

Allegedly you can use up to 2 outputs simultaneously, at least not when charging, although all 3 are never recommended. I think it really all depends on how much current draw. E.g., if the "Primary" V is +19V, at 6A, that's 114W maximum assuming the battery can only provide -- at most -- the "Primary" V up to its maximum current and not more. So if you're notebook uses an A/C adapter with 90W DC output, or +19V at 4.74A, that leaves 24W, which is +12V at 2A.

The Huaer 608 series uses a Lithium Polymer (Li-Polymer). It's as stable of a Lithium solution as one can get. The Lithium salt is laminated with its electrodes, removing the need for pressure, especially any metal enclosure. This basically removes its flammability and mitigates any explosion potential. Although it's still Lithium salt and can combust with an over-volt, it won't be self-sustaining on its own materials. The bonus is that Li-Poly batteries can be nice'n thin, as the 608 series is at only 0.75" (sub-20mm) thick in a standard 8.5"x11" letter size!

In fact, I can fit two (2) "atop one another" on the "other side of the divider" in my Kensington 62232 SaddleBag Sport 17" backpack**'s notebook compartment. I actually set the battery "atop" of my Ultra ULT31436 RJ11/RJ45/USB1.1/FireWire Cable Kit**, as the 0.75" thickness "fits into the groove" of the non-binded end of the cable kit case, with the ports "sticking up" (and closer to the top of the bag). I'm surprised the unit doesn't get hot at all, and it takes a good 2+ hours to even be "warm," but clearly sub-100F. It seems that Li-Poly is also much more temperate too!

**NOTE: I only paid $49.99 - $24.99 rebate (yes, an odd rebate amount) for the Kensington and $29.99 - $20 rebate for the Ultra kit. I received the Kensington rebate in about 2 months, the Ultra was just a more recent purchase (but I've received all Ultra rebates from OnRebate.COM and Rebate-Zone.COM thus far). I highly recommend the features of the Kensington 17" SaddleBag Sport -- you can see it easily in the dark, and the storage capacity/layout is the ultimate, while still fitting under Boeing and Airbus seats (and meeting FAA regulations for under-seat backpacks, unlike other 17" designs).

The main downside to Li-Poly is that it is capable of less recharges than common Li-Ion** batteries, about 500, before seriously degrading**. But I considered that issue mitigated, because I will recharge my external battery about 1/5-1/10th as often as my internal battery. I'd much rather have the size, safety, portability and other features of a Li-Poly than a Li-Ion, while staying Lithium-based (whereas other, older technology, like NiMH, options are 3x the size).

**NOTE: Bix Computers told me that 500 recharges is not unexpected for Li-Ion either. I must have mis-read some of the articles I read on-line.

The 608 is available in current-hour capacities of 4,000-13,000mAh, depending on "Primary" V output as follows from the manual (sans the fact that I've calculated the equivalent Watt-hours):

608-AH (+19V)

"A" 9000mAh, 19V@6A, 171Wh
"A1" 4500mAh, 19V@4.5A, 85.5Wh
"A2" 6000mAh, 19V@6A, 114Wh

608-BH (+16V)

"B" 9000mAh, 16V@6A, 144Wh
"B1" 4500mAh, 16V@4.5A, 72Wh
"B2" 6000mAh, 16V@6A, 96Wh

608-CM (+12V)

"C" 13000mAh, 12V@6A, 156Wh
"C1" 6500mAh, 12V@6A, 78Wh
"C2" 6000mAh, 12V@6A, 72Wh

The A/C charger input provides a standard +12V DC @ 4.2A (the manual states the battery charges at +12V @ 4A), and takes up to a full 7 hours to charge when depleted (which makes sense as +12V @ 4A = 48VA). I verified this as at least 5-6 hours to reach 4 LEDs (and typically at least 6 to get the "green" charge LED), as I have depleted the battery a total of 4 times now for my Performance Tests.

Bix Computers Offers the 9,000mAh (144-171Wh) Units

The two (2) most common, 9,000mAh units are a 2.75lbs. +16V@6A unit rated at 144Wh and a 3.1lbs. +19V@6A unit rated at 171Wh. The only reseller (non-distributor, direct to the end-user) I found with these two in the US was Bix Computers, the BP140 (+16V@6A, 9000mAh, 144Wh) and the BP170 (+19V@6A, 9000mAh, 171Wh). Bix Computers provided pre-sales support via e-mail and answered most of my questions rather promptly. I ordered the BP170 for $219 and they shipped it, as advertised (within cut-offs), the same day (i.e., I ordered it in the evening EST, so very late afternoon PST, so they shipped the very next morning) without gouging me on shipping.

As a nice surprise, Bix Computers shipped two sets of cables with adapters. As such, I have had no trouble finding ends to match my +19V DC, A/C adapter-provided notebook input (even older Toshiba models) and my +12V electronics (from an external Ultra hard drive enclosure to a portable DVD player). I already have a retractable USB connector for powering my Treo, and have used it with the battery as well (while the dv9000z was on it too).

Linux and Windows 3D Performance Testing

I've run the 4 tests in the following order (with Linux Performance over Power last):

Linux A/C, Power over Performance**: Around 4.75 hours (Doom 3)
Windows A/C (fixed setting**): Over 3.25 hours (Doom 3)
Windows A/C (fixed setting**): Over 3.25 hours (Medieval II: Total War)
Linux A/C, Performance over Power**: Over 3.5 hours (Doom 3)

I wasn't buying this external to test at normal DVD playing or 2D. I know this battery will go 8-10 hours under such load. I wanted to crank out the 3D of the GeForce Go 7600. One thing I love about Linux is the standardization** at kernel and user-space utility support level. Using the GNOME GUI for Power options (KDE has its equivalent, which uses the same, single, unified** kernel ACPI interfaces and same, single, unified** support utilities) I can tell it, even if it's on A/C power (from either the DC input from the A/C adapter output or an external battery providing DC, such as this case), to act like battery, as well as go "full bore" with performance over power -- so I tested for both.**

So with Power over Performance (again, an option on even assumed A/C adapter input**), I got almost 5 hours (may have been just as close to 4.5 hours -- as I wasn't too accurate on that first run), say a solid 4.75 hours, running a full 3D accelerated application (Doom 3). Although it was a tad sluggish on the Go 7600 as it basically "minimized power usage." With Performance over Power, I got over 3.5 hours running a full 3D accelerated application (Doom 3 -- but no more sluggishness at "full Go 7600 power").

As I hinted, there is one (1) mode and one mode only** I could use under Windows, "full power," when it sees me on assumed A/C (which it's not with the external battery, but it's coming in on the DC input as if using an A/C adapter). It only offers other options when on battery. I could not find any HP BIOS, Windows utility or other solution, as the Windows power control panel won't let me set options that the standard Linux interfaces to (which both GNOME, KDE and other desktop GUI panels all unify on, which means it doesn't matter what "pretty little window" you use in Linux, all the options are there!). The fan was whining constantly at 100% (not even what Linux does, as its ACPI is more power-effective for the same performance because it manages so many things well), and the CPU area was seriously hot (which makes it a good thing I took the Li-Ion battery out!).

In the end, I got over 3:15 (3.25, but not nearly over 3.5 hours like Linux) with Windows running both Doom 3, as well as Medieval II: Total War, a session with each. To ensure that Linux wasn't getting the benefit of a "newer battery," I ran the equivalent "full power" Linux Doom 3 session after these two (run number 4), and got another, full 15 minutes with no distinguishable difference in performance. I attribute this to the more dynamic control Linux has over various aspects of the dv9000z -- from the Turion x2 to the fan control, all via standard ACPI calls.

**SIDE NOTE: People think Linux lacks standards, and that's entirely false. Linux systems have one (1) subsystem and only one, single subsystem to support something -- whether its printers (CUPS, instead of GDI v. PCL v. Postscript that often conflicts in Windows between vendors, let alone Windows spooler v. Windows IPP support is a PITA) or mainboard "Fake" RAID (FRAID via dmraid, instead of countless vendor drivers, some vendors even conflict with their own drivers!) or scanners (Sane, including 1 standard front-end/utility suite, unlike Windows TWAIN, which is a recipe for conflicting GUI-subsystem disasters) or, in this case, ACPI power management -- there is 1 kernel subsystem and 1 set of utilities.

That means I can easily configure the computer to act differently on battery and direct DC input (assumed A/C adapter) with the standard GUI for whatever desktop I'm using (I use GNOME, many other people use KDE) that goes back to the single kernel subsystem and single utility suite. This including telling the system not to not assume it should suck up the power as much as it can as if the DC input really is the A/C adapter and keep the fan on whining, because I am -- in this case -- on external battery, that comes through the external DC input. Under Windows, the standard Windows power panel doesn't give me that option, nor anything else, and I still can't find the HP utility that does, so I need to find a 3rd party utility or some registry hack.

More on LED Lights and Charge Status

There are five (5) LEDs on the front of the unit (opposite the inputs/outputs), four (4) power status and one (1) charge status. The charge status is red when charging, green when charging is complete. The power status shows up when charging or when you press the "Test" button, and the four (4) LEDs light up from left-to-right as follows ...

1 LED = 25%
2 LEDs = 50%
3 LEDs = 75%
All 4 LEDs = 90-100%

This may be bit misleading for those not used to external Lithium-based power packs (as compared to NiCD or NiMH), but they make sense since Lithium cells never drop below 30-35% charge, and it's recommended you stick around 40% when storing. What that really translates into is ... (reverse order)

4 LEDs = "Full charge," after 5-10% use, it will drop to ...
3 LEDs = "Mainstay," which is where you'll get 60-70% of your time, before ...
2 LEDs = "Used" (long-term store charge), you've now spent about 75%, before ...
1 LED = "Well used" (ideal store charge) heading towards minimum, final 5-10% battery time, until ...
No LEDs = Beeps after a few minutes, shut down ASAP!

This basically maps into the charge of Li-Ion/Poly cells. The "mainstay" charge is 3 LEDs (50-90%), which you'll get 60-75% of your "battery time." Once you hit 2 LEDs (50%), you're under 25% "battery time" left, and then 1 LED (25% -- probably not actual charge, but closer to 40% actual charge of Li-Ion cells) really goes quick. Li-Ion/Poly cells do not need to be "fully discharged" before charging, and when they are active, you should (and can safely) keep them "topped off." I.e., always charge to 4 LEDs when you can -- which is why I said 4 LEDs is "a good starting point."

And since the duration of their shelf-life is actually better if you have a "lower charge" (storing Li-Ion/Poly) at higher charges actually reduces lifespan), aim for 2 LEDs or "just into" 1 LED. Although the "off switch" (one of the nice things about having an external, Li-Ion/Poly battery) actually helps prolong the battery life, because (I assume) it turns off some of the output regulation logic (which is also and directly proportional to the current charge). The input regulation logic, of course, is directly powered by the input itself when it's so being charged (and doesn't reduce battery charge, of course).

Office Suites: OpenDocument and OpenXML

2007-01-07T23:36:00.000-05:00

2006 January Work-in-Progress (WIP)

Due to the increased number of comments on this subject, I figured it's time to blog a full history and comparison of these two, alleged standards.

Overview:

XML: Not an interoperability standard
A brief history of Sun StarOffice (and OpenOffice.org)
A brief history of Microsoft Office
Rich Text Format (RTF): The useless standard
Intellectual Property (IP) considerations
Cross-platform history
Document compatibility and longevity
My history and preferences

1. XML: Not an interoperability standard

Probably the biggest myth to dispel from the get-go before talking of any standards is that XML is a standard for content and style like HTML or SGML. XML is very much not. I'm not going to spend time on defining all these acronyms and explaining further (other than in the following on XML) as I assume that if you are reading this you have heard of them (except maybe SGML), know what HTML is and know that XML (even if you don't understand it) is what most everyone is using today.

In a nutshell, XML was the answer the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) gave to vendors who constantly complained about the slowness of their standardization process. XML is essential a set of standards for creating vendor standards for their implementations. XML has nothing to do with interoperability. It merely says how you should format your tags, how you should document your definitions, how you will define your schema, etc... Most "complete XML" documents are those that have a base "content" block (typically its own file), with one or more style blocks (or possible style templates), another block for modifications to the schema/templates, and then any base support definitions, templates, schema, etc... (which may or may not be included)

Now there is no "master" or "root" way to "interpret" all of these support specifics and allow one specific XML implemention by another XML solution, at least not automagically in software. And there never will be, period. And that's just the technical reality, before we tackle source code availability, intellectual property (IP) considerations and countless other, non-technical details.

2. A brief history of Sun StarOffice (and OpenOffice.org)

StarView class library
StarOffice 3.0
StarOffice 4.x and 5.x
OpenOffice XML (OpenOffice 1.x and StarOffice 6/7)
OpenDocument XML (OpenOffice 2.x and StarOffice 8+)

StarView class library

I'm going to skip over the history of German StarDivision, which was founded in 1986, and begin with the cross-platform StarView generation. In the early '90s, StarDivision developed a cross-platform class library aka "toolkit" for C++. In non-geek-speak: a bunch of programmer code that lets you write software for any computer without having to worry about the differences between the computers. At the time, there was a lot of uncertainty where Microsoft was going with IBM on OS/2, as well as the "Chicago rumors" inside of Microsoft (which became Windows 95, and took Windows NT's place as the desktop OS) as well as existing UNIX need for a cross-platform library. I'm sure the success of the first, integrated office suite, ApplixWare on UNIX (Solaris, among others), StarDivision decided to take its existing product offers and do similarly.

Geek Note: StarView was built for DOS, OS/2, Win16, [true] Win32 (as Windows NT 3.1 just came out, over 2 years before Windows 95), MacOS (pre-v8/Carbon) and Sun Solaris 2 (OpenView) and became commercial available for license by late 1994, after the release of StarOffice 3.0.

StarOffice 3.0

StarOffice 3.0 was the first, integrated, cross-platform office version (sans MacOS) that first appeared in 1994 from StarDivision. It was available on OS/2 (32-bit), Windows (16-bit, but also ran on Windows NT) and Solaris (32-bit Sun UNIX). All dialogs were the same across all applications, and offered a true, integrated suite. Its StarView library was both a blessing and a curse. While it resulted in almost total transparency across platforms, it was a memory hog, as the entire office suite with all its features was resident. It often required a whopping (at the time) 16 or even 24+MB of memory to run well on OS/2 or Windows (and even more for Solaris or MacOS).

One of StarOffice 3.0's greatest strengths was its support for a wide variety of documents, including new Internet export features. Not only did it handle WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, not only did it handle Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel import, but it also did Lotus Ami Pro (one of the few word processors to attempt such import of a "Desktop Publishing," DTP, like format), but even ClarisWorks (especially since a MacOS port came out later) and a few other systems. And they worked surprisingly well, at least for well-defined documentation formats (i.e., non-Microsoft ones). One of the most original aspects of the StarOffice 3.0 suite was its elementary export of HTML, something that Microsoft would not offer for almost another 3 years.

Geek Note: Not all import filters for other formats were available on all platforms. E.g., the Ami Pro import filters were only offered on OS/2 and Windows, and the ClarisWorks import filters were initially only offered on MacOS.

The StarView toolkit supported standard UNIX systems (as well as OS/2-derived ones like 16-bit and 32-bit Windows) and utilized the Sun OpenView and, later, Motif, toolkits for Solaris. GNU systems, such as Linux, are typically very Solaris-like/compatible (SunOS was the original GNU platform before Linux), so StarOffice 3.0 became available for Linux later (and was a standard "port" for version 4.0+ on-ward).

StarOffice 4.x and 5.x

StarOffice 4.0-4.2 was little changed from StarOffice 3.0, except for the addition of full Win32 (32-bit Windows) to the StarView toolkit so it ran natively on Windows 95 and NT (I would argue better than Microsoft Office in the case of the latter, since it was designed for multi-user systems like UNIX). PowerPoint support was added to StarImpress (and Impress' features really made PowerPoint look unpolished, especially for Internet and other capability) and the Linux port became a standard offering.

StarOffice 5.0-5.2 switched away from the StarView toolkit to a completely new C++ class library. With MacOS 8+ switching to Carbon, MacOS support was dropped as was OS/2. It was completely Windows 9x/NT aware, as well as native to Linux and Solaris. Font support on these platforms were greatly improved, especially UNIX platforms with true type support. Although still written in C++, Java became a staple for scripting and extensibility in the suite.

Geek Note: I don't know what StarOffice 5.0-5.2 used, details are sketchy. From what I've summized, it was STL C++ with some Boost (at least they became Boost) class libraries, and then some sort of cross-platform MFC (Windows) and Motif (UNIX) toolkit (and it wasn't WINELIB, it was very native).

In 1999, with over 40 thousand employees, Sun Microsystems tired of supporting Windows desktops and bought StarDivision outright for under $100M (the deal was original reported/estimated to be around $250M, and may have been over $100M after other considerations/purchases). Sun decided to begin releasing all the source code (programmer code) it could under the Lesser GPL (LGPL) license, which allows any commercial company to integrate the source code into their office suite, as long as changes to just the Sun provided source code portion is returned.

Geek Note: The LGPL allows dynamic linking with any other source code, even proprietary. Any and all source code Sun is unable to secure the rights to LGPL, Sun has either largely replaced with new LGPL developments or kept if it sees value but does not affect compatibility (e.g., clipart, additional fonts, additional import/export filters, etc...) in StarOffice. This has proved so successful of an approach that Sun is using the same for Java, with all GPL-licensable source code going in the OpenJDK, which replaces and provides for a superset of the Java SE (Standard Edition) and only those components not GPL-licensable going in the Java EE (Enterprise Edition) starting with version [1.]6.

OpenOffice XML (OpenOffice 1.x and StarOffice 6/7)

The resulting release of Sun's source code resulted in OpenOffice.org (OOo) version 1.0 (and StarOffice 6.0). At the heart of OOo was a new document standard, OpenOffice XML. StarOffice had always maintain a strong document definition and excellent backward compatibility over its almost decade-long existance, and OpenOffice XML was the complete "clean-up" of those definitions, styles, etc... into a set of standard, and complete, XML. OpenOffice's formats (.sx_) are ZIP compressed archives with files for the document's content, style and related schema/definitions. All OpenOffice XML base definitions, schema and templates are openly available and no additional logic in the suite itself is required except for processing and rendering. Although being licensed LGPL, any other tool can directly utilize its processing and rendering outside of the GUI (graphical user interface) -- such as production programs on a factory floor that aren't PCs.

Geek Note: Not just use of XML formatting, DTDs, schema, exact dimensions on formatting (very critical), standard templates, etc... PKZIP 2.x is an archive with individually compressed LZ77 files (LZ77 is also used by gzip).

The OpenOffice XML release included a submission of the full specification to the non-profit Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standard (OASIS). OASIS is the defacto-standards organization that over 600 sponsoring companies and vendors submit all XML standards to in the Internet generation. The sponsors of the OpenOffice XML submission not only included Adobe, Corel (WordPerfect) and Sun, but the US' largest exporter and industry documentation leader, Boeing. There are now many, lesser-known, 3rd party office suites on the market that utilize the LGPL OpenOffice.org codebase from Sun.

OpenOffice.org 1.1 (and StarOffice 7) was the revision that included the official, OASIS ratified standard of OpenOffice XML (which OpenOffice 1.0 is compatible with as well with an update) and various other improvements. One improvement was the complete segmentation of the suite into individual components (reversing the design of all prior, "load everything memory hog" approaches) that now results in a much leaner suite. It also included many improvements in Microsoft Office compatibility, some as a directly result of Sun's broad cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft. Sun holds all copyright on OpenOffice.org, which allows them to license to third parties under a non-LGPL license (this is of great note). It requires all contributors to the OpenOffice.org project to sign a non-exclusive contributor's agreement. Sun pays the salaries of the majority of full-time OpenOffice.org developers.

Geek Note: For those Linux "advocates" fixated on the recent Novell-Microsoft cross-licensing agreement of 2006, it is important to note that there will be no fork of OpenOffice.org by Novell. Not only is Sun helping with the new OpenXML support, not only is all OpenOffice.org code under Sun's copyright, not only does Sun's "agreement" with Microsoft that allegedly "taints" OpenOffice.org well before Novell's, but this alleged "new issue" doesn't start with OpenXML as Sun has been working on pre-OpenXML, Microsoft Office document import/export support from Microsoft "gold books" for over 3 years now (which affects OpenOffice.org 1.1+). There is a lesser-known, well-speculated reason for this (see the next section on the history of Microsoft Office).

OpenDocument XML (OpenOffice 2.x and StarOffice 8+)

OpenDocument XML is the result of a full, year-long review by OASIS and its members (including newer sponsors like IBM) of the OpenOffice XML standard for extensibility and compatibility with many office approaches, including Microsoft Office. OpenDocument XML has about 100 changes from OpenOffice XML, and is now considered the "going forward" version that all major office suites like Corel PerfectOffice/WordPerfect, IBM Lotus SmartSuite and even Microsoft Office (despite statements to the contrary), are adopting at least full export/import support for OpenDocument XML.

OpenOffice.org 2.x and StarOffice 8+ support OpenDocument XML, and read-only support has been added in OpenOffice.org 1.1.5+. Most importantly, Sun has signed over all Intellectual Property (IP) rights to the trust of OASIS, which will hold them (as many other submissions) under a right for all to use freely.

Probably the greatest, additional change in OpenOffice 2.x is the introduction of a truly open database front-end framework. OpenOffice.org always had an open data integration support, but it lacked a true front-end that wasn't tied to the legacy Adabas D (included in all versions of StarOffice from 8 back to pre-open source). The only component not offered in the suite is a personal information manager (PIM), although it does integrate with Mozilla browser (Firefox), mail (Thunderbird), calendering (Sunbird) and other components.

No native MacOS X (Cocoa/Aqua) version is offered, but there are both X11 (UNIX X-Window, as MacOS X is a Darwin-based UNIX system and offers networking with X11 graphical compatibility) and several other options. A Cocoa/Aqua port has been a highly desired option, especially since full, cross-platform document compatibility is offered by the OpenOffice.org base (unlike Microsoft Office for Mac, see following sections).

3. A brief history of Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office 4.x
Microsoft Office 7 (95)
Microsoft Office 8, 9 and 10 (97, 2000 and XP, including 98, 2001 and X/2002-Mac)
Microsoft Office 11 (2003 and 2004-Mac)
OpenXML (Microsoft Office 12/2007)

Microsoft Office 4.x

After the success of Claris and AppleWorks on Mac, Microsoft actually released its first "Office Suite" on Mac in 1990. It wasn't an integrated office suite, but just a collection of existing programs for the Mac platform. ApplixWare on Solaris and Windows, and several other, emerging suites including Lotus SmartSuite 3.x, were also available for Windows. So on the Windows 3.0 front, Microsoft cobbled together its Word, Excel and PowerPoint products into Office 3.0 (aka 92). The programs were separate and did not offer OLE (Object Linking and Embedding).

It wasn't until really Office for NT 4.2 in 1994 (Word 6.0, Excel 5.0 and PowerPoint 4.0) that Microsoft offered a fully integrated office suite where different programs could link to each other (Office 4.0 was to a lesser extent using Word and its simple applets, as it had issues with the older versions of Excel 4.0 and PowerPoint 3.0), although menus, key combinations, context sensitive menus/help and other integration was lacking (and would until much later, although acquired products like Visio still don't). The "NT" name was a misnomer, as the programs weren't 32-bit (except on Alpha, although its document compatibility was another matter), and required Windows NT 3.51 "Daytona" for "Chicago," what would become Windows 95, compatibility.

Geek Note: The modern Windows application use of the registry begins largely with Office for NT 4.2.

The first, commonly used Microsoft Office version was 4.3, with the same product versions on the NT 4.2 release. Thanks to Jochaim Kempin, a brilliant strategist out of Microsoft German, Microsoft Office 4.x when from less than 10% PC OEM share to over 90% OEM share. Kempin invented "bundling" and "rebates," and turned Germany's largest PC vendor, Vobis, from a 0% Microsoft shop to a 100% Microsoft shop overnight. By not only giving away software at a substantial loss (e.g., pay $11/unit for MS-DOS and get Windows plus Office 4.3 for free), but paying vendors "rebates" of the exact licensing costs for competitors products so vendors do not ship them, within 2 years (by 1996), Microsoft gained an overwhelming share of the market. This was despite the fact that individual Lotus 1-2-3 and Corel WordPerfect outsold Microsoft Word and Office sales combined on the retail shelf several times over.

Geek Note: Although no other software (let alone hardware) company has accomplished similar, 90% of the PC market is typically driven by tier-1 and tier-2 PC OEMs. 3dfx graphics cards outsold nVidia on the consumer , retail shelf, yet nVidia infiltrated the PC OEM market and grabbed a 90% share within no time.

The answer was simple, an assumed "free lunch." Most companies were looking to upgrade their aged DOS or Windows software, typically Lotus 1-2-3 3.1 and WordPerfect 5./15.2 for Windows (or earlier, possibly still DOS) and the new cost of Lotus 1-2-3 4.0 (or SmartSuite) or WordPerfect 6.0 (or PerfectOffice) was easily $700+ per system. PCs were now costing under $1,500 new, and they came with Microsoft Office (which the company got for free). Even when some, largely tier-1 OEMs licensed Lotus SmartSuite 3.1 or 4.0, Microsoft would often pay the $70-120/license in a "rebate" back to the OEM not to ship. And if they didn't agree, such as IBM who owned Lotus, Microsoft would jack the price of DOS and Windows up over $100/system (typically 4x its $25/system

The common attitude is that Lotus and WordPerfect were "too slow" with their Windows software, and that's why Microsoft "won." That's not true at all. AmiPro (acquired by Lotus), was the first, native Windows what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) documentation program (it's actually a DTP, not a word processor), and Lotus 1-2-3 3.1 and, later, 4.0 (which had some of Lotus Improv's capabilities) were available before their Excel equivalents. Corel also offered Borland's Quattro Pro in its PerfectSuite, which was considered more native to Windows (build with Borland's advanced Windows components and framework) than Microsoft Excel at the time.

It was attacking the OEM, bundling and rebates. By 1996, with over 90% of the market, Microsoft started to charge for Microsoft Office -- essentially the Office 7 version. At first it was $50/license. But within another year, it raised the cost to over $200/license for just the base version.

The MacOS 4.2.x versions had documents largely incompatible with newer Microsoft Office 4.x for Windows, as with prior releases. You could often send a document from Windows to MacOS, but not vice-versa. The deeper reasons for this is documented in a following section on cross-platform compatibility.

Microsoft Office 7 (95)

The first "Chicago" (Windows 95) 32-bit native release of Office was version 7, with all products (Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc...) incremented in version to match Microsoft Word, now version 7. Microsoft Schedule+ was introduced as a personal information manager (PIM) to combat Novell's Groupwise offering (among others), using the legacy Microsoft Mail API (MAPI) interface in Windows NT systems, also added when installed on Windows 95.

Office 7 (95) formats were partially compatible with Office 6 (4.x) documents, to a point. Microsoft offered upward compatibility, but did not offer good backward compatibility. The technical reasons for this are largely documented in the cross-platform section.

Despite the "Designed for Windows NT" logo program, 0% of Microsoft own products -- including Microsoft Office -- passed the requirements for the logo certification. Office 95 was not multiple user aware and had had various security issues when run under Windows NT, including most things refusing to run unless the user had "Administrator Privileges" (the "Power User" group/privilege came about as a direct result of Office 95 incompatibilities). Office 95 was the first office suite to be built on Visual Studio 5.0, and required the Internet Explorer libraries (a purposeful attempt to make Internet Explorer a required portion of the operating system), and integrated at the heart of the Windows (even Windows NT, bypassing its security protections). This is where most of the security vunerabilities come from -- especially on Windows NT, which has security privilege levels that DOS-based (yes, it's still in there -- version 7.x, and most system calls are 16-bit DOS 20) Windows 95 does not.

Geek Note: Yes, MS-DOS 7.x is still the kernel of Windows 95/98/Me (95/A = MS-DOS 7.0, 95B+ is 7.1 with FAT32 support), including all major system calls (16-bit DOS 20-3Fh functions) that are "augmented" by the still "386Enhanced" memory model VXDs and other virtual drivers and libraries. Caldera successfully sued Microsoft (settled out-of-court) for illegal product bundling of MS-DOS 7 + Windows 4 (Windows 9x) in violation of the 1995 DOJ Decree, and would testify later in the 1999 trial. In fact, Windows Me attempted to remove various support of these 16-bit functions to force developers to stop using them, but even Microsoft's own products took issue, hence why Windows Me is the least compatible version as most will note.

Microsoft Office 8, 9 and 10 (97, 2000 and XP, including 98, 2001 and X/2002-Mac)

To Do

Microsoft Office 11 (2003 and 2004-Mac)

To Do

OpenXML (Microsoft Office 12/2007)

To Do

4. Rich Text Format (RTF): The useless standard

To Do: Not even used by Microsoft, let alone everyone uses a "DOC import filter" on RTF because it's always got embedded DOC from Microsoft Word. Possibly should be #2 instead of #4?

5. Intellectual Property (IP) considerations

To Do: Sun gave theirs to OASIS, Microsoft promises not to sue open source
but reserves all rights.

6. Cross-platform history

To Do: Including why Microsoft has issues (data-alignment-based) between versions, let alone MacOS X, and why they _had_to_ switch to a XML format (even if it only encapsulates binary data)

7. Document compatibility and longevity

To Do: Not only my "real world" experiences from Office 7/95 through 11/2003 (read: can I please re-format again, I love doing that over and over Microsoft! NOT!), but also my _personal_ experience coming from Lotus 1-2-3 4.0 and AmiPro 3.1 to StarOffice 3.0 on Windows in early 1995, and the fact that I can _still_ read my documents!

8. My history and preferences

To Do: I'll talk about LaTeX to OpenDocument/MathML conversion options (since I use LaTeX for professional documentation), the IEEE Article and Book templates, and the equivalent DOC 6.0a (Office 4.x) template that I've had to hack and hack and re-hack over the years, etc...

NOTE: I'll probably end up "reorg'ing" this again in the end, but this is a "good start."

Entry removed ...

2007-01-02T01:33:00.000-05:00

Fedora 64-bit Browsing and Media

2006-12-16T08:44:00.000-05:00

Work-in-Progress: 2006 December - 2006 January

For those running any Linux/x86-64 distribution, you've undoubtably run into the "Long Mode" memory model, or more specifically, the fact that libraries, plug-ins and programs with 48-bit addressing can't use those of 32-bit and vice-versa. I previously covered the hows and whys of this model, and how most other OSes attempt to address it (or avoid it altogether). Fortunately for most users of Fedora Core or Suse Linux x86-64, this is fairly well mitigated, especially after the first few versions. Unfortunately, it hasn't been addressed well when it comes to Internet browsing and multimedia. There are no x86-64 versions of Acrobat, Flash and the x86-64 version of Java lacks a plug-in.

Although I've run every x86-64 release of Fedora Core since version 3, I have basically "hacked" i386 RPMs in as needed. This has been a general PITA when it came to updates, and always required manual intervention. After purchasing a new HP Pavilion dv9000z notebook, I decide to install Fedora Core 6 x86-64 and strictly install only the absolute minimum i386 RPMs required for browser and multimedia compatibility in the hope that no special commands are required outside of YUM to update.

I'm happy to report I was able to accomplish this, and have updated over a dozen times over the last month via YUM without issue. I have broken this article into four (4) parts.

Overview:

Livna x86_64 Multimedia
Extras/Livna/3rd-Party i386 Multimedia/Plugins
3rd-Party i386 Firefox 2.0
Future, Automated YUM Updates

1. Livna x86_64 Multimedia

Ideally, we want to only install i386 when absolutely necessary. For the most part, this is only when we need browser plug-in functionality. For nominal desktop usage, including DVD and common multimedia playing, the x86-64 components are just fine. For obvious legal and "clean redistribution" reasons, Fedora leaves out several components. Although Livna provides them, I do not recommend you blindly tap the Livna repository without considering possible indemnification issues, especially if you are installing them at a commercial entity.

Procedure:

Remove Totem
Setup Livna key and repo
Install various DVD support, Xine and Totem-Xine
Install additional multimedia

For DVD and other multimedia playback, including CSS encrypted DVDs, we want install Xine and, for GNOME (possibly KDE users as well), replace the /totem package with totem-xine. For MP3 playback, I like included XMMS and will merely add the MP3 support along with the Grip digital ripping and Lame MP3 encoding package. I can honestly say I only grip my own CDs and DVDs, period, and strongly believe in respecting the IP of others regardless of what I think of them (as I expect them to do the same of my works).

Remove Totem

# yum remove totem

=============================================================================
Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
=============================================================================
Removing:
totem                   i386       2.16.1-1.fc6     installed         4.9 M
totem                   x86_64     2.16.1-1.fc6     installed         4.9 M
Removing for dependencies:
rhythmbox               x86_64     0.9.5-4.fc6      installed         6.4 M
totem-mozplugin         x86_64     2.16.1-1.fc6     installed         300 k

Install Livna public key and repo

# rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY
# rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm

Install various DVD support, Xine and Xine-Totem

NOTE: xine-lib-extras-nonfree, from Livna.ORG, now seems to be required for CSS encrypted DVD playback as xine-lib is in Fedora Extras. Also note the Xine versions between packages may not match up in the example below.

# yum install libdvdcss libdvdnav libdvdplay libdvdread rhythmbox totem-mozplugin totem-xine xine-lib xine-lib-extras-nonfree

=============================================================================
Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
libdvdcss               x86_64     1.2.9-4.lvn6     livna              31 k
libdvdnav               x86_64     0.1.10-2.lvn6    livna              88 k
libdvdplay              x86_64     1.0.1-4.lvn6     livna              34 k
libdvdread              x86_64     0.9.7-1.lvn6     livna              66 k
rhythmbox               x86_64     0.9.5-4.fc6      core              3.1 M
totem-mozplugin         x86_64     2.16.1-1.fc6     core              129 k
totem-xine              x86_64     2.16.2-2.lvn6    livna             1.9 M
xine-lib-extras-nonfree  x86_64     1.1.4-1.lvn6     livna             522 k
Installing for dependencies:
aalib                   x86_64     1.4.0-0.11.rc5.fc6  extras             75 k
libmodplug              x86_64     1:0.8-3.fc6      extras            114 k
lirc                    x86_64     0.8.1-0.2.pre2.fc6  extras            248 k
xine-lib                x86_64     1.1.2-17.fc6     extras            2.1

Install additional multimedia

This is definitely left to individual taste.
# yum install grip lame lame-libs xmms-mp3

2. Extras/Livna/3rd Party i386 Firefox/Multimedia

Now the fun begins. First off, Fedora Core 6 x86-64 comes with both i386 (32-bit) and x86-64 (48-bit) versions of Firefox, but favors the latter by default. You want to leave the latter installed for desktop support, but we want to favor the former when you run Firefox. So we'll need to change the startup script (I should make a RPM that does this, and re-applies anytime a new version is installed). Then we'll mix in some 3rd party RPMs, namely Acrobat Reader, Flash v9 and the JDK (I prefer having the full JDK over just the JRE). Lastly, we'll do what everyone says you shouldn't, but it works just fine. We'll drop in two (2) YUM Repo files that are disabled by default, then run one (1) command enabling them temporarily to give you just what you need -- namely DVD, MP3 and codec support along with MEncoder/MPlayer and plug-ins for i386.

Procedure:

Verify both Firefox i386 and x86-64 are installed
Edit Firefox launch script to favor i386
Setup jpackage key and repo
Download 3rd party i386 RPMs
Install and enable 3rd-party i386 software
Setup 3rd-party i386 plug-ins
Setup Extras-i386/Livna-i386 repos (disabled)
Install Extras/Livna i386 RPMs

Verify both Firefox i386 and x86-64 are installed

It's important to note that with Fedora 6, each entire tree for Firefox is installed in /usr/lib[64] for i386 and x86-64 respectively. You should ensure both are installed, i386 for what you're going to use, but also x86-64 for desktop and other, native x86-64 support. You should at least have x86-64 and have to only install i386 in the worst case. Don't be tempted to uninstall x86-64, as various dependencies (especially GNOME) will come up. Yes, the Firefox launch script will launch i386 by default if it cannot find x86-64, but not having the x86-64 version installed can cause some dependency headaches.

# yum list firefox
...
Installed Packages
firefox.x86_64 1.5.0.8-1.fc6 installed
firefox.i386 1.5.0.8-1.fc6 installed

Edit Firefox launch script to favor i386

Now we will edit /usr/bin/firefox to favor the i386 version. I highly recommend you use RCS to maintain changes of any files, especially stock files. That way, you can easily do differences or [re-]patch changes whenever scripts are updated. I will include the few, paltry commands to revision files below.

# cd /usr/bin
# mkdir RCS
# ci -l firefox
type in something like "Firefox launch script"
# gvim firefox
or whatever your favorite editor is

Comment out the following lines ...
#if [ -x "/usr/lib64/firefox-1.5.0.8/firefox-bin" ]
#then
###MOZ_LIB_DIR="/usr/lib64"
#fi

And let's save our changes so we can identify them later ...
# ci -l firefox
type in something like "Removing detection of lib64 version"

Now the 32-bit version will launch when you execute Firefox.

Setup jpackage key and repo

The JPackage Project maintains a most excellent Sun Java compatibility RPM that properly configures the Alternatives system for Sun's Java, allowing it to co-exist with GCJ as well as offer additional capabilities.

# rpm --import http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage.asc
# cd /etc/yum.repos.d
# curl http://www.jpackage.org/jpackage.repo
# gvim jpackage.repo
or whatever your favorite editor is -- enable (enable=1) the non-free repository

Download 3rd-party RPMs

Install and enable 3rd party RPMs

Setup 3rd-party i386 plug-ins

Setup Extras-i386/Livna-i386 repos (disabled)

Install Extras/Livna i386 RPMs

# yum --enablerepo=extras-i386 --enablerepo=livna-i386 install a52dec.i386 libdvdcss.i386 libdvdnav.i386 libdvdplay.i386 libdvdread.i386 mencoder.i386 mplayer.i386 mplayer-fonts.noarch mplayer-gui.i386 mplayerplug-in.i386

=============================================================================
Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
a52dec                  i386       0.7.4-10.lvn6    livna-i386         49 k
libdvdcss               i386       1.2.9-4.lvn6     livna-i386         31 k
libdvdnav               i386       0.1.10-2.lvn6    livna-i386         89 k
libdvdplay              i386       1.0.1-4.lvn6     livna-i386         34 k
libdvdread              i386       0.9.7-1.lvn6     livna-i386         66 k
mencoder                i386       1.0-0.66.rc1.lvn6  livna-i386        1.3 M
mplayer                 i386       1.0-0.66.rc1.lvn6  livna-i386        2.6 M
mplayer-fonts           noarch     1.1-4.lvn6       livna             1.0 M
mplayer-gui             i386       1.0-0.66.rc1.lvn6  livna-i386        237 k
mplayerplug-in          i386       3.31-2.lvn6      livna-i386        482 k
Installing for dependencies:
aalib                   i386       1.4.0-0.11.rc5.fc6  extras-i386        74 k
enca                    i386       1.9-3.fc6        extras-i386       118 k
faac                    i386       1.24-6.lvn6      livna-i386         79 k
faad2                   i386       2.0-19.20050131.lvn6  livna-i386        209 k
ffmpeg                  i386       0.4.9-0.25.20061030.lvn6  livna-i386        1.7 M
fribidi                 i386       0.10.7-5.1       core               53 k
gsm                     i386       1.0.10-12.lvn6   livna-i386         41 k
imlib2                  i386       1.3.0-3.fc6      extras-i386       576 k
lame-libs               i386       3.97-3.lvn6      livna-i386        331 k
libdv                   i386       0.104-4.fc6.1    core               80 k
libid3tag               i386       0.15.1b-3.fc6    extras-i386        44 k
libmad                  i386       0.15.1b-4.lvn6   livna-i386         82 k
libmp4v2                i386       1.5.0.1-2.lvn6   livna-i386        264 k
libmpcdec               i386       1.2.2-4.fc6      extras-i386        30 k
lirc                    i386       0.8.1-0.2.pre2.fc6  extras-i386       238 k
lzo                     i386       2.02-2.fc6       extras-i386        63 k
speex                   i386       1.2-0.1.beta1.fc6  updates           475 k
x264                    i386       0-0.8.20061028.lvn6  livna-i386        241 k
xvidcore                i386       1.1.0-4.lvn6     livna-i386        242 k

3. 3rd-Party i386 Firefox 2.0

Procedure:

4. Future, Automated YUM Updates

Procedure:

Smaller Footprint x86 Embedded

2006-12-04T23:07:00.000-05:00

Work-in-Progress: 2006 December - 2006 January

Most of the embedded systems development work I've done during my career has focused largely on non-x86 compatible systems. Specialized, custom, low-power, low-thermal, small systems with 68k, ARM, MIPS, Power[PC] and XScale in more recent years, and even some more eccentric before that. But when it comes to lower-volume, commodity-off-the-shelf solutions, there are many options available to developers.

Overview:

Commodity x86 Embedded Form Factors
Commodity x86 Embedded Processor Sockets
Commodity x86 Embedded Interfaces and Peripherals
What x86 Embedded Should and Shouldn't Do
Solid State Boot Options and Issues
Sample of Today's Commodity Products

Commodity x86 Embedded Form Factors

[ need to add drawing of MicroATX v. Mini-ITX v. 5.25" SBC v. 3.5" SBC against standard-size ATX in enclosure ]

I'm not going to even attempt to cover all of the available form-factors that x86 products are available in. That would take many, many blog articles. Intel's Embedded Computing Small Form Factors, is a great starting point for looking up any form factors I cover here, plus many other, often smaller, options.

ATX Compatible: MicroATX (9.6x9.6")

MicroATX is clearly not an embedded form-factor, but it is commonly used in x86 embedded prototyping and provides as good "basis" where to start as most PC technicians are at least familiar with ATX (12" wide x 9.6-13" deep) and its 6" wide face-plate for external, user-accessible ports.

MicroATX has traditional ATX faceplace compatibility, the first 6", with another 3.6" for up to 4 vertically standing slots, a total of 9.6 wide. In a nutshell, it is 12" wide ATX with "3 slots chopped off." MicroATX should not exceed 9.6" in depth, making it no more long than it is wide (9.6x9.6" square), although it is commonly only 8.0" deep. Prototype MicroATX boards often have just about every interconnect on-board, in addition to traditional slots of most (if not all, many gone from newer PC systems) types. See the next section on those. MicroATX prototyping boards are often used as a base-board for ETX (see below or the aforementioned Intel page).

For completeness (in case you run into it), FlexATX is a variant of MicroATX that is only 7.5" wide (sometimes 7.5x7.5" square, although commonly the same depth as MicroATX, a resulting 7.5x 9.6"), with up to 2 vertical slots. It was a lesson common, but popular "low-cost" desktop option that has been replaced by Intel in the last 2 years by the slightly wider (10.5") and changed-orientation (when sitting vertically in a tower for thermal considerations in the expansion and CPU areas, long story) PicoBTX. And despite Intel's main, new value form-factor for OEMs being 10.5x10.5" MicroBTX, MicroATX is still far more popular. Neither FlexATX nor any of the newer BTX options are are popular for prototyping embedded today, and especially not for embedded given the next ATX compatible option.

ATX Compatible: Mini-ITX (6.7x6.7" / 170x170mm)

Mini-ITX has become quite popular over the last 3-4 years as the smallest ATX face-place compatible solution, and is virtually always 6.7" square. Unlike MicroATX or similar, desktop-centric form-factors, Mini-ITX was designed for the smallest footprint/entry-level embedded size PC. The width is the standard 6" for the ATX face-place, with just enough width left for a single, traditional, vertical expansion slot.

Using no or a low-profile card in its slow, the form-factor fits in as small as a 7x7" enclosure less than 2" high -- essentially not much more than ATX faceplate dimensions. Indeed the size difference between a 9"x11"x14" MicroATX cube and a 7"x7"x2.7", of which (the added 0.7" height above the ATX face-place) allows for an internal 2.5" notebook hard drive and a slimline DVD-RW optical drive, is quite massive as a previous blog article of mine last year contrasts quite effectively in just a few snapshots.

[Embedded] Single Board Computer ([E]SBC): 5.25" (6"x8")

The designation of the 5.25" SBC (aka ESB[C]) comes from its size relative to the dimensions of the common PC 5.25" disk drive, 6" wide by 8" deep. Although much of this designation owes itself to storage solutions, it is a common form-factor for countless embedded platforms where no traditional, external face-plate is used. Indeed, in most cases, a limited set of ports are physically connected, and most ports (sometimes quite extensively) are optional pin-outs with included or optional cabling. On-board ports are usually on the edge of long side, so even when connected, the 5.25" SBC will fit in a complete 8x8" enclosure, such as a NEMA 4X enclosure (rated for outside usage), with only those few ports needing cut-outs with air/water-tight gaskets.

Another note on SBC versus most Mini-ITX is power input. Most Mini-ITX requires standard and varying +3.3/5/12V 20-pin ATX 1.0 power input (although some do not), whereas most SBC systems vary widely. Some take a single +12V, others a dual +5/12V, yet others may even take variable voltage and yet others might take as high as +48V.

[Embedded] Single Board Computer ([E]SBC): 3.5" (4x6" / 102x145mm)

The next, obvious and popular SBC form-factor is the 3.5" SBC. Designed to fit in the typical 4x6" PC 3.5" disk drive bay, it is probably the smallest, massed produced form-factor for x86 for embedded applications without getting into vendor-centric form-factors. The 3.5" SBC is smaller than Mini-ITX, has limited ports like its bigger brother, but is still big enough to offer countless pin-out headers, a good helping of various interconnects (such as ETX, PC/104, etc...) and interface options.

Common Interconnect Form-Factors Used on Other Form-Factors

One note I want to make on form-factors is that some form-factors that are built around commonly known interconnects (some stackable, some not), but are also and quite commonly available as options on larger form-factors. E.g., even though PC/104 (including PC/104 Plus) is a known, embedded form-factor (90x96mm), it is also an interface you can find on 3.5" SBC, among others.

Other form-factors are not completely usable units on their own, and require additional support. E.g., the Embedded Technology eXtended (ETX) is a "brains" board that uses up to four (4) 100-pin connectors (one set in each corner) to connect to its "base board," commonly a 3.5" SBC or larger, with pin-outs and additional peripherals. In fact, ETX is a great prototyping and even limited production option where you are evaluating different "core logic" options (Eden v. C3 v. Geode LX v. Geode NX v. ULV-Celeron v. Yonah, etc...), but you have found a "base-board" that supports your peripheral/interface needs (which can get eccentric). Furthermore, it's not uncommon to see a 3.5" SBC model and find out it's a baseboard plus ETX module atop, which several manufacturers do to minimize costs/maximize reusability across multiple processors/chipsets as well as different peripheral options (e.g., optional CardBus/PCMCIA and/or CompactFlash, extra serial ports versus other options, etc...) even though they don't separately sell the 3.5" SBC "baseboard" from the ETX module.

Again, start with the aforementioned Intel link for more on PC/104, ETX and other common interconnects with their own form-factors as well as when used as an interconnect atop of other form-factors.

Commodity x86 Embedded Processor Sockets

While some PC technicians are familiar with older and newer PC desktop and, to a lesser extent, server sockets, commodity processor sockets for Embedded PCs are typically different.

Socket-370 for Intel ULV Celeron/Pentium and ViA Eden/C3

Socket-370 is a rarity in the Embedded PC world now, but it needs to be addressed. For the most part, the legacy GTL+ bus with SDR (single data rate) SDRAM used by both Intel Ultra Low Voltage ([U]LV) Celeron and Pentium processors (based on Pentium II/III generation) and ViA Eden/C3 products are rarely offered in a Socket-370 PPGA or FC-PGA flavor. Most of the time both Intel and ViA release these processors ball grid array (BGA) packages directly solidered on the mainboard itself.

ViA's GTL+ bus solutions offer DDR SDRAM support, even though the "front-side bus" to the processor may only be SDR SDRAM. This is because the chipset integrated graphics processor unit (GPU) may utilize main memroy as well.

Socket-462 (A) for AMD Athlon XP-M and Geode NX

About the only "cross-over" product from the desktop to the embedded world is AMD's Geode NX. Not to be confused with the Cyrix-National Semiconductor lineage, including AMD's own Geode LX and earlier products, the Geode NX is a Thoroughbred-Barton generation, 9-issue, but ultra-low voltage (ULV) Athlon core. Although one has to take care when it comes to the Geode NX, as its voltage requirements and jumpers do not match those of standard Socket-462 processors, but those of the Athlon XP-M[obile].

Reference this most excellent article for more information on the voltage/keying-jumper differences between desktop Socket-462 and mobile/embedded Socket-462.

Socket-S1 (638) for Sempron Mobile, Turion 64 and Turion x2

AMD has moved away from its value desktop and mobile Socket-754 with DDR SDRAM support to its new, dedicated Socket-S1 with 638-pins and DDR2 SDRAM support for portable and embedded PC solutions. Socket-S1 could be considered the "sister" of Socket-AM2 (940-pins), which is AMD's new, unified (both value and performance) desktop DDR2 SDRAM platform. Sempron Mobile, Turion 64, Turion x2 and virtually all future AMD mobile and embedded (you can safely assume a future Geode product) will be featured on the Socket-S1 platform with DDR2 support and a single, HyperTransport tunnel for I/O, graphics and access to additional CPUs.

Socket-479 (Yonah/Merom) for Pentium-M, Core and Core 2

The "rebirth" of the Intel 7-issue Pentium Pro architecture into the "Core" platform in the aftermath of the NetBurst/Pentium 4 performance/thermal issues begins with the Pentium-M[obile], the original Socket-479 platform. The Socket-479 platform, with upgraded DDR2 support over Socket-370, adapted the last, Pentium III design (7-issue + 1-SSE pipe) into the Pentium-M design for portable and embedded solutions. The original, Intel Yonah series of products, better known as Core, was introduced on the same platform. The newest generation, Merom series -- better known as Core 2 -- is yet the latest implementation of the Socket-479 platform.

When it comes to Socket-479, it is important to note exactly what Socket-479 implementation is in use. Although most older Socket-479 platforms support the Pentium-M, fewer support Yonah/Core and even far fewer the latest Merom/Core 2 products. This is not unlike the issues on the desktop with various processor support for LGA-775, where most existing LGA-775 implementations do not support Core 2 -- although Core was never release for LGA-775 (which simplifies things a little bit).

Commodity x86 Embedded Interfaces and Peripherals

When dealing with embedded form-factors, minimizing the size of any expansion options and add-in peripherals is essential. As such, here are several interface options to be aware of on various ATX-based and SBC boards. When I mention size, this is the width of the connector, and not necessary any limit on the overall size.

PC/104 and PC/104 Plus

Although now very rare, it is not too infrequent to see an embedded platform offering PC/104 connections. The PC/104 portion of an embedded board, such as a 3.5" or 5.25" SBC, will fit in 90x96mm (typically near one end of the board). The original specification called for 104-pins for 8-bit ISA, extended to 146-pins for 16-bit ISA -- all 100mils spacing (0.1"). PC/104-Plus adds 120-pins of 50mils spacing (?) for PCI. Although an even newer PCI-only specification removes the ISA pins to regain real-estate, it is rarely seen in embedded. Most systems now favor Mini-PCI connectors to add a few, necessary

Mini-PCI (60mm)

Mini-PCI almost looks like a SO-DIMM memory socket, but it's not. It's a commonly a 32-bit, 33MHz PCI slot (although other width/speed options exist, but are very are) on a shared PCI bus (133MBps), but saves a great amount of mechanical room. A major driver of Mini-PCI was the need for interchangeable communication devices (modem, network, wireless, etc...) on portables, such as notebook computers. The same holds true for embedded.

One thing to note is that while 32-bit CardBus and 32-bit PCI share some similarities, CardBus is not a PCI bus, even though CardBus it is commonly bridged from PCI. CardBus was designed to be mechanically compatible with PCMCIA (designed for ISA-generation systems) and offer backward compatibility.

CardBus (and PCMCIA)

PCI Express Mini CEM (30mm)

The PCI Express Mini Card Electromechanical (CEM) design, aka Mini PCI Express (or Mini PCIe), is almost a PCIe (a dedicated, 3GHz, bi-directional per x1 bit ~ 250MBps per x1 bit at 8/10 data encoding serialized interface) slot turned on its side with a more SO-DIMM like connector (NOTE: the PCIe CEM specification has a reservation of many pins, including for a second channel, so it's capable of PCIe x2 or ~500MBps). Quite perfect for PC portables, the Mini PCIe interface allows two 30mm wide expansion modules in the same width as one 60mm wide Mini PCI device. And unlike Mini PCI with CardBus, the latter maintaining backward compatibility with PCMCIA (and ISA electrical/voltage) which had to be bridged to PCI, Mini PCIe has a direct relationship with not only PCIe slot, but the ExpressCard standard for external add-on cards (a good contrast in the design difference is illustrated here). An external ExpressCard/34 (34mm wide) device is basically the same as an internal Mini PCIe card.

LVDS Flat Panel Interface

Parallel AT Attachment (ATA)

CompactFlash

Other Options

What x86 Embedded Should and Shouldn't Do

Solid State Boot Options and Issues

Sample of Today's Commodity Products

LPI Reiterates and Updates Certification Policies

2006-12-04T20:22:00.000-05:00

The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) has recently reiterated its exam retake policies and recommendations as well updated its recertification policy with the recertification requirements to maintain an ACTIVE status. I will attempt to cut through the rhetoric with the facts, the tracks, newer developments and, finally, my professional opinions.

Overview:

- Who is LPI? How are they different?
- Just the Facts of the New LPI Recertification Policy
- The LPI Certified Level 3 (LPIC-3) and New Specialization Developments
- Opinions from a LPI "Outsider"
- Democracy v. Meritocracy+Executive

Who is LPI? How are they different?

Before I answer that, let's step back and look at other companies (and their motives) in the certification industry. There are three (3) types of certification companies, from most to least recognized, at least typically ...

1. For-Profit Product Vendor
2. For-Profit Training or For-Profit/Non-Profit Industry Associations
3. Non-Profit or Government-Related Professional Organizations

And before I being to address those, let's look at where each obtains their revenue, in order of most profitable to least profitable ...

1. Product and support sales with possibly some training-related revenue
2. Training, training materials and other training-related revenue
3. Certification and other, exam-centric fees with extensive volunteering by industry

By far, the most recognizable certifications are those of, by and for a vendor and its products. They are driven by the sheer economies of scale of the hardware and software products sold, and the training of professionals on and for the product ensures the product sells because it is supported. Some demonize this as "pushing product," and some do little to actually put "value" into an otherwise worthless, computered-administered examination with a lot of high profit-margin training (or training partnerships) built around them. But some vendors do take the time and effort to care about the quality of their certifications. Cisco and Red Hat deliver lab-based certification to ensure many of its qualified professionals actually have "hands-on" with the product. The programs aren't perfect (and Cisco is guilty of some of its lesser certifications being computer-administered "cakewalks" like others), but they are a solid attempt by the vendors to present individuals as adequately competent with the product in common usage.

The second type is commonplace among many, alleged "vendor-neutral" certification organizations. Most of these organizations, although their certifications are branded differently, are actually for-profit training organizations. They sell their own training materials, training programs or certified training licenses to select partners and trainers. In a nutshell, training is the revenue, and it can be a very profitable one. If the demonizing is "pushing product" for the former, it's definitely "selling training" in this case. I have personally balked at some of the "test of a test" type questions that I assume formal training would answer on some exams in one of these "vendor-neutral" programs, and reverse my logic when I retook the exam (the only one I ever failed) and got a perfect 100% on the section I had previously failed (even though I had made an 85% overall, I got a 69% -- 1% under the section minimum).

Lastly, but not leastly, are non-profit organizations or government agencies charged with certification and licensure. Although some fees are collected from actual examination, certification and licensure, most of their "resources" come directly from volunteers in the industry. Rules, statues and objectives, consideration for locale titles and relevance of knowledge, practices and principles are the foundation of their focus, content and the resulting professional who is entitled their designation. These organizations thrive on community involvement, but that community involvement must be a "put up or shut up" involvement, with actual donation of time towards not only developments, but the openness to consider both ideas from peer-professionals as well as, and just as much, what commercial organizations in the industry consider "important" for a professional to know and respect.

The not-for-profit Linux Professional Institute (LPI) is the last type, earning no money from vendor alignment or partnerships and no money from training or sale of materials or any related training partnerships. And despite early, multi-vendor funding, LPI has been self-sufficient for almost a half-decade now. It survives on the limited funding it receives from direct examination and the countless volunteers who help develop and analyze the objectives and exams themselves.

LPI has certified more Linux professionals world-wide than any other Linux program.

Just the Facts of the New LPI Recertification Policy

There is countless comments, complaints and even some rhetoric and FUD flying about regarding LPI's new Recertification Policy (see Section 6). I hope to cut through these comments and get to the facts.

1. Perpetual Certification: LPI Certifications are perpetual -- i.e., LPI Alumni who obtain LPI Certified (LPIC) status at any level will always be in the LPI database as a professional who has obtained LPIC status.

2. Linux Knowledge is Perpetual: LPI has, since Day 1, always stated that they value all Alumni who obtain their certifications and believe that Linux technical knowledge, unlike most vendor hardware/software products that change significantly with every version (many times, often purposely for marketing/forced upgrades/recertification) is perpetual.

3. Certification Date Is Relevant: LPI has also, since Day 1, stated that both Alumni and employers should take into consideration the date of the certification, and whether concepts from the examination version and period are relevant to today's new Linux capabilities that were not tested prior.

4. Minimum and Recommended Retake: LPI has always had the policy that no Alumni may retake any certification exams until they are revised, although it recommends Alumni retake certification exams whenever the objectives are revised. NOTE: This has been roughly every two (2) years, at least in the case of LPIC-1 (exams 101 and 102), which is the highest level approximately 90% of LPI Alumni have obtained.

Even with this new policy, these terms have not changed since Day 1. Several people have even gone as far as demonizing and proliferating rhetoric using item #4 (which is an abuse of such a Democratic process or any organization that listens to its providers and consumers), saying that LPI requires you to retake the exams every 2 years. This is not the case at all -- never has been, never will be! The recommendation, to retake the exams on every objective revision, has not changed since Day 1.

Since then, the policy has been augmented as follows.

A. ACTIVE v. INACTIVE Status: In 2004, LPI decided to introduce an ACTIVE and INACTIVE status for LPI Alumni. Alumni who have an ACTIVE status must recertify before their ACTIVE period expires. Alumni who have an INACTIVE certification (did not recertify before the date their ACTIVE period expired) must pass all lower and current exams again to regain an ACTIVE status at the same level.

B. Five Year ACTIVE Status: In 2006, LPI has instigated the following requirements for maintaining ACTIVE status:

- Certified prior to 2003 September 01: Must recertify by 2008 September 01 or lose ACTIVE status in database.
- Certified after 2003 September 01: Must recertify within a 5 year period after their certification.

Recertify: The recertification terms are clearly open right now, but will be better defined in the near future (see the next section on LPIC-3 and specialty developments). At this time, it means passing all of the exams at your current level, namely exams 101 and 102 if LPIC-1 and exam 201 and 202 (but not 101 and 102 again) if LPIC-2. In the near future (i.e., 2007), a new LPI Certified Level 3 (LPIC-3) and specializations beyond LPIC-2 will be available.

All of these new developments will be released well before any existing LPI certification becomes INACTIVE (the first date any would become INACTIVE being 2008 Sep 01).

The LPI Certified Level 3 (LPIC-3) and Specialization Developments

For more on the LPI Certified Level 1 and 2 (LPIC-1 and LPIC-2) tracks, see my 3 year-old blog entry on Linux Certification: CompTIA, LPI and Red Hat (from 2003 May). Unlike prior LPI certification levels, LPIC-3 is going to offer a set of options.

Although LPIC-3 has not yet been finalized, it is clearly the "Mastery" level. As such, broad, general exams used at levels 1 (Junior Administrator, equivalent to 18 months of full-time employment in an enterprise LAN/WAN/Internet environment) and 2 (Seasoned Administrator of 36 months) are not are easily applicable. LPIC-3 exams are going to be specific to technologies, more towards a Mastery-level.

Now not every administrator is going to have Master-level knowledge of every, major Linux technology and implementation. As such, LPIC-3 will be a set of elective exams. The first two (2) level 3 exams currently in development are Samba (and network filesystem-related services) and LDAP (and network directory-related services). At least four (4) other LPIC-3 exams are also being developed, but will be released later. Industry input is driving these two (2) exam choices for the initial LPIC-3 release.

So like prior levels, only two (2) level 3 exams will need to be passed to obtain LPIC-3 certification. For the initially available LPIC-3 track, only Samba and LDAP will be available. For subsequent exam releases, more options and combinations will become available. There is open speculation regarding whether a higher level title, such as Master LPIC-3 or LPI Certified Level 4 (LPIC-4), will be achievable upon release of all six (6) exams currently under development. First things are first, as LPIC-3 must become available.

But more realistically is the flexibility of the LPI program when level 3 exams become available. Specializations and other titles are options for those at LPIC-2. These specializations also become a draw in value for those approximately 90% of LPI Alumni who only obtained LPIC-1 and stopped, and reason to obtain LPIC-2. And given the recertification requirements to maintain ACTIVE status every five (5) years, just taking one (1) LPI level 3 exam, and earning a new specialization, becomes a direct way to recertify.

In fact, one could argue this is the best "continuing education requirement" offered yet in an IT certification program. Most professions require completion of "continuing education" every 5 years to maintain a certification or license, and most of these are under the direct ethic to force individuals to "learn something new." Taking a new LPI level 3 exam, and earning a new specialization in the process (let alone LPIC-3 after two level 3 specialization exams), is a great way not to just have people "take the same old exam!"

A program must continue to maintain a sense of "current value" to its certified individuals. LPI has always and will always recognize every Alumni who achieves any LPIC status. As LPI offers the LPIC-3 with its master-level of specializations, it opens up the opportunity to enforce real "continuing education requirements." And LPI has chosen to do so on a 5-year cycle, which is an accepted, "real world," non-profit/government certification/licensing practice.

Opinions from a LPI "Outsider"

I am a traditionally degreed engineer. Although I keep putting off my Professional Engineering (PE) license, one of these days** I'll bite-the-bullet and obtain it. And when I do, the "continuing education requirement" every 5 years or so becomes a reality.

[ **NOTE: I largely waiting for the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) and various state Board of Professional Engineers (BoPE) to not only recognize software engineering as a legitimate, licensed engineering practice, but actually offer a true Practices and Principles exam for it. Until then, all I can take is the general, Electrical Engineering examination with 4 specialization options for the second half. Both the non-profit IEEE and the non-profit NCEES have had the course ware, examination materials and, most importantly, the attitude -- saying "it's time" for Software Engineering for the last 10 years, especially from a "safety" and an "in public interest" standpoint -- but the "bridge builders" must not listen well as they control much of the process (don't get me started). ]

In the IT certification world, which I largely loathe, the recertification process is largely a joke. After going several bouts with Cisco after taking all 5 exams of the dual-CCDP/CCNP track (not including the 2-exams for the pre-requisite CCDA/CCNA), Cisco informed me one of my exams was "too old," even though I only took it 3 months earlier. And if I want to recertify my RHCE, I have to take the full day, 6-hour lab exam all over again at full price ($750 in 2003). And if you think that's bad, I can't wait to see what Red Hat requires for recertification on the RHCA -- a 5-exam set of 3-6 hour lab exams!

Now those are the sets of exams from two (2) of the, maybe, three (3), "best" vendor programs out there (Novell being the only other vendor that offers lab or simulator-based exams). When you start talking other vendor exams, they are even worse. And that's before we even look at CompTIA, which only tests at an over-simplified "6-months of experience" level, let alone is heavily influenced by industry and training vendors.

There has been a lot of rhetoric flying about, even the word "proprietary," on this new recertification requirement to maintain the ACTIVE status. Many have started to question LPI's organizational decisions as of late. Now everyone should understand that the LPI leaderhsip and organization has changed over the past year or two. While I have nothing but good things to say about those who "got the process rolling" in the first 5-6 years -- from the founders and original leaders like Evan to the Pritchards to countless other volunteers, it was inevitable that LPI would gain enough "business mindshare" that industry factors would reshape it. This is required to keep the LPI organization moving forward, especially with all the additional and expedited developments that were always going to occur.

But the community is large enough that we can't always do everything in a "Democracy," and it's turning into more of a combination of "Meritocracy" combined with "Executive Leadership." Democracies are great, but they aren't always efficient -- and sometimes can be defeating. "Meritocracies" are definitely "put up or shut up" and you can be certain that with individuals like Matt running the exam development, he's definitely a "put up" type of guy. At the same time, you have to have "Executive Leadership" that finally "makes a decision" or otherwise things don't move forward -- and can (and often does) drop into a mode of "tit4tat" style rhetoric and political arguments. As long as that "Executive Leadership" consults the community, it works (and I'll let others argue whether or not this happened).

With that all said, I haven't really "put up" anything (really haven't had any time due to consulting work since the April committees in Boston), so I tend to "shut up" other than to point out these simple realities. I still owe Matt countless hours I offered, but haven't fulfilled.

Democracy v. Meritocracy+Executive

This is not the first time such an "organization" has been debated. The Debian Project clearly uses a huge Democracy of maintainers, with some Meritocracy, and even some Executive (but it's largely removed and has virtually no power in decisions). Most of Debian's "commercial decision making" base begins with the original Progeny corporation started by its founder, and is now the separate DCC Alliance (of which Progeny participates in).

I could not count on my hands how many times the LPI Discuss list has going through clearly "heated commentary" on MTAs (among countless other things). Why sendmail? Why this? Why not that? At some point, you have to pick what you can support, for whatever reasons. E.g., optional sectioning costs real money from Prometric/Vue for their computer-administered testing formats, and at some point, there has to be a decision on what 1 or 2 MTAs to support.

One of the beautiful things about Debian is the flexibility in kernel, GCC and GLibC -- essential the base ABI/API (Application Binary Interface, Application Programming Interface) in each release. It's also one of the major issues with Debian for industry. The DCC Alliance is standardizing the ABI/API for industry. Many have balked about this, but it's the type of "Executive Decision" I'm talking about.

Not to throw "Linux branding" into the mix, but with another, purely community-developed distro -- The Fedora Project -- Red Hat forces the base ABI/API (among other) aspects. There will always be one (1), fixed, base ABI/API per release. It gets specific to "get things done." It's not perfect, it's less flexible, and many people don't like the limitations. But for most of the community and all of the industry, it works and allows consistent releases in a timely manner that are well integration-tested.

There's nothing wrong with such things being done in the Debian world, and I hope we see more moves like the DCC Alliance is making on Debian. After all, Debian can continue to address the community better than a single vendor like Red Hat, at the same time, multiple vendors in the DCC Alliance can tie-down and make the Executive Decisions required to push things through to support industry. In the same regard, as long as LPI's Executive listens to its members and always adheres to the advice of its Meritocracy, built on the Democracy of its Alumni, it can serve both the community and its industry well.